With the hard-fork happening today (1st August 2017), Bitcoin investors and traders will soon be able to decide their preferred version of the Bitcoin blockchain – Bitcoin Cash (BCC) and Bitcoin (BTC).
Bitcoin Cash (BCC) will be a complete duplicate of Bitcoin’s blockchain including all of its transaction history. All Bitcoin users will be provided with the exact amount of BCC as they had in bitcoins at the time of the fork. This means if a user had 1 BTC available on his/her wallet during the time of the fork, they will be eligible to claim 1 BCC on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
This basically means ‘free money’ to those uninterested in the debate and will ultimately result in the ‘dumping’ of Bitcoin Cash (BCC). How about Bitcoin? Will its value ever be impacted by the existence of Bitcoin Cash and the dumping of the currency that is bound to occur?
Not too long ago, a similar event took place with Ethereum whereby some members of the community decided to stick with the old platform that was hacked (The DAO incident). Apparently, the decentralization and ultimately, the democracy of the currency is far more important than the vulnerability of the platform for members who support the old platform. This resulted in two very similar yet different cryptocurrencies – Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Today, Ethereum Classic is traded at around $14 USD whilst Ethereum has thrived to reach a value of over $200 USD. Was Ethereum’s value ever affected by the existence of Ethereum Classic? Well, the answer is NO. These are treated as two separate cryptocurrencies/platforms with no correlation to one another except for the fact that they were once a single platform managed by the same development team.
Looking at the case of Ethereum, we can know one thing for sure. Bitcoin Cash will be dumped indefinitely by users who are merely there for the ‘free money’ - as we have seen through the ‘dump’ of Ethereum Classic as soon as the fork was completed. Another thing we know for sure is that there will be lots and I mean, LOTS of confusions between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, particularly between new Cryptocurrency users for the next couple of months and potentially years.
But will Bitcoin’s value ever be affected by Bitcoin Cash? Well, Ethereum’s case tells us that it won’t. If anything, Bitcoin’s value will be far more strengthened upon the successful completion of the fork. After all, it is an update!
The saddest part about this fork, for me at least, is that this is the end of the Bitcoin story. The Bitcoin fork which retains the BTC ticker does not follow the architecture that Satoshi Nakamoto had set, and while the Bitcoin Cash does follow its founder's vision, it has unfortunately been relegated to being an altcoin, shunned away by the crypto community. It's bloody heartbreaking.
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