Popular Bitcoin entrepreneur has shared his stance on the scaling issue and a looming intentional Bitcoin hard fork according to a published transcript of a Q&A session with the Chinese Bitcoin community on 8btc on Saturday July 30.
Andreas Antonopoulos was responding to several questions including one on the negative impacts the controversies regarding the scaling could cast on the long-term value proposition and investor confidence in Bitcoin.
He says: “Development of bitcoin is accelerating. The number of new features, improvements and innovations is increasing all the time. Scaling is just one issue and it does not define bitcoin. Scaling will continue to be an issue as long as bitcoin is growing.” Just like Ethereum?
Antonopoulos says Bitcoin has had two unintentional HF and there is a coming Bitcoin HF which could lead to two coins. Thus, Bitcoin could end up like the Ethereum hard fork experience. "Bitcoin will have a hard-fork, eventually, I think," predicts the author of Mastering Bitcoin. "When bitcoin has a HF, there will be 2 chains after the fork and there will be 2 coins. It is almost guaranteed that some people will refuse the new chain and will remain on the old chain. There are enough people with significant amounts of bitcoin who will never agree to a fork and can afford to keep mining the old chain. Ethereum demonstrated this issue very well.” Antonopoulos continues by underlining that in bitcoin it will be much bigger because the “old” bitcoin may be worth as much as all of ethereum (1 billion USD).
He explains: “It will not undermine bitcoin’s value very much, but it will cause some chaos with users, wallets and exchanges. This is why a HF needs to be very carefully planned and executed with plenty of advance notice. We also need to learn […]
