Tomorrow the hard fork of Bitcoin ABC will happen, whereby a new altcoin named BCC or Bitcoin Cash will be created. I am fully against this hard fork, but I see some very good reasons to keep this altcoin that I can access using the same private key as for my BTC. When you own your own keys, you will be the owner of BCC after the fork.
First I want to say that this fork doesn't make me worry too much. Because it is almost sure that it will become an altcoin and it will only be supported by a small part of the community. This means that the brand, limited supply and the mining difficulty is not in danger. I am more worried about the planned fork to double the block size 3 months after Segwit get’s implemented, because the support for this is way bigger.
Because I am against this fork, my first thought was to immediately dump BCC. However there are some reasons to keep on to them:
1: Your BTC is most secure as long as you don't touch your BCC
After the chain split you will have the same amount of BCC as you have BTC and they are accessible with the SAME private key. The BCC software is created in a very small timeframe and we don't know how trustworthy the code is, this also counts for new BCC wallets that will come in existence.
When you download a specific BCC wallet that is created by scammers or hackers and import your private key, you will not only loose your BCC but also your BTC, because the private key is the same. Furthermore you can accidentally send your BTC while making a BCC transaction when the replay protection is not properly implemented.
The only way to be sure your BTC is secure, is by not sending your BCC! It will be proven safe as time after the split goes by without problems.
2: By dumping your BCC, you could be on the wrong side of the trade (even if you are sure….)
Like everything in BTC is managed by free market forces, the size of the share of each coin that you will get is perfectly decided by the market. When BCC gets 10% of the value, this means that 10% of ‘money’ thinks BCC will be the best investment. So actually, you will get automatically a by market decided diversified portfolio after the split!
When you dump one of the coins there is a chance that you will be on the wrong side of the trade and you will risk to loose everything. Even when you are sure you pick the best side, you can still be wrong. Or do you think you are smarter than the market? Good luck!
When you hold on to your BCC, you will always end up owning the same amount of a valuable coin as you did before the split. When they both live on and co-exist, you will be happy to own both. When BCC goes to zero, this 10% value will flow back to BTC and raise the price. When BTC goes to zero, this 90% flows into BCC and will let it spike enormously. The market decided that the chance of BTC to win is 90%, this makes sense right? Off course this is all roughly and based on a BCC valuation of 10%……….
3: Both sides in the scaling debate can do their own thing
In long term this split could be good for BTC. Segwit implementation is delayed a lot by big blockers and the price crashed many times because of the scaling debate (maybe we are already about a year behind from where we could be). By holding on to your BCC the chance that the chain will survive will increase and this will give the big blockers their own playground.
This means that (a part of) the miners that want big blocks will mine on the BCC chain and there will be less of them on the BTC chain. Now consensus can be reached more easy and innovation can speed up. Secondly, the chance of the 2x hard fork will decrease significantly.
Keep their chain alive, so they don’t bother us!!
4: The BCC experiment will give answers for future discussions
The BCC blockchain will be a great experiment where we can learn things about scaling in real life. Core supporters claim that the node count will decrease significantly when the block size increases, because there will be more resources needed to run a full node while it is not delivering any income. Now we will see in real life how this plays out and use this information for future decisions in the scaling debate.
By keeping your BCC you may be investing in knowledge for BTC.
5: By dumping your BCC you might give power to Ver and Wu
I read an interesting article that Roger Ver and Jihan Wu (and maybe other rich big blockers) could buy a lot of BCC for a low price after everyone dumps it. When they do so they will own enough BCC to manipulate the price and give wrong signals to the market. So after a huge dump they could pump it on a moment that they can support their statement that BCC is better than BTC and hijack the brand and user base. If you hold on to your BCC it will be more expensive for them to get a stack that is big enough for manipulation. Here is the article:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-28/bitcoin-civil-war-over
Keep your BCC to avoid that Ver and Wu get power to manipulate!
6: When the PBoC or the Chinese government is behind Bitcoin ABC the price could pump
Some people think the Chinese big block community is driven by the PBoC or Chinese government to take over Bitcoin. There is no prove they are and there is no prove they aren’t, so everything is possible. When the fork is organized by these entities, they will probably have a huge amount of money at the sidelines to drive up the price of BCC after the fork in order to signal to the market that BCC is the real bitcoin. When this happens there is A LOT of money to be made bij holding on to your BCC for a while.
Bad actors could pop up the price after the fork to make a false signal to the market. If you hold on to your BCC you can profit enormously from a event as this and you will gain power to dump it for BTC at the moment you wish.
Disclaimer:
This is no trading advice, but my thoughts on the upcoming fork. Everyone is responsible for his own trades / investments
No advice but common sense:
Take your bitcoins off the exchanges and store them on your own wallet. A hardware wallet is most secure and still usable. If you cannot get a hardware wallet before the event you could store your bitcoin on a desktop wallet till your device get delivered.
Previous post:
https://steemit.com/investing/@michiel/investment-idea-buy-better-ethereums
Request:
Do you (dis)agree on this post or do you have something to add or discuss, please make a comment below!