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Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

Although this is true as I understand Bitcoins it kind of ignores how it would work in practice.

Essentially, if we had a mature Bitcoin network, then we'd all have some money in it. And we obviously have an interest in keeping that money valid.

Sure, half the people could fork off with new rules for Bitcoins, but they leave behind everybody's old bitcoins in the process. As others have commented, it is a fork of the currency, but you don't get to keep your old bitcoins.

So although the rules can change, you start from scratch again. Your old bitcoins won't work in the new world of 100 bitcoins / 10 mins, and those new bitcoins won't work in the old world.

So we'd all have to start over. Ergo, it doesn't seem very likely.

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It would be worse than starting over.

If they fork the block chains, my understanding is that your old bitcoins will work alright in either network. People that stick to the old network won't accept any money from the new one, but nothing keeps them from spending their money in the new one. Thus the adopters of the new economy would be subsidizing the members of the old one.

[Edit] And now my own semi-rebuttal: sure enough, the people who move to the new economy can similarly spend their old credit in the old one. But considering that the original Bitcoin currency is deflationary in nature, they have less incentive to do so, at least immediately.

I believe the new network could choose to accept the old coins so you wouldn't have to start from scratch.

If you had the "old" coins, would you want to spend them in the "new" network where their value is much lower?

The coins are copied. You could spend them in both networks independently.

Ah, so you are saying that I can use the same coin twice: once on each network. Basically, as long as the networks keep splitting the coins can be re-used. However, this would devalue the coin, independently of whether the new networks introduce further inflation. This seems undesirable to most people on all the networks: if by splitting I can still only buy 10 cups of coffee with my bitcoins, just now it's more of a pain because I have to remember through which network to use it, I wouldn't want to do it.

If someone started a new Bitcoin-like currency they should start from a blank slate. Cloning the network chains would be confusing and frivolous at best.

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