13th Jan 2018 - Forks
Today, I decided the best thing for me to do is begin studying at once. Perhaps something I read will trigger my lost memories, tell me the best currencies to invest and trade in in 2018. Also, something else has occurred to me --I have no valid identification and no bank accounts. Which means that, once the little cash I have in hand is exhausted, all my living expenses will have to be paid in crypto. And that's assuming I've earned enough through Steemit in the first place. Great. I have to read about how to do that very soon.
Anyway, I started research at a coffee shop in the area. (I've started getting my locations down: gas station for bathing, hidden back alley for sleeping and now this coffee shop for wi-fi) The first thing I did was google up 'BITCOIN'. And to my surprise, I found out that there are various bitcoins, and each is a different currency from the other. They were all created from one cryptocurrency, the very first and original bitcoin, referred to as the bitcoin core.
I soon found out what this meant: a hardfork happened when a different blockchain is born from another, making both the original and the new share a transaction history up to that point. Forks are done for a variety of reasons, and happen chiefly because it is almost impossible to modify all node of a blockchain at once. Every miner must agree to the change, and that could be difficult. Hence those that want the change break-off to form a new blockchain of their own, resulting in a new currency. As at this time, there have been numerous forks from Bitcoin. From what read though, the most valuable and widely accepted of these are Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold, followed by the newer Bitcoin Diamond. This creates a problem for me. With all of these growing rapidly, I can't tell which is referred to as 'bitcoin' back in the future. Does the core remain king? Or does another take over? Well, I shall continue my research.
Something else: it seems i arrived at a time when forks are happening more and more often. Just between December 2017 and this month alone, there have been forks for Bitcoin God, Bitcoin Uranium, United Bitcoin, Bitcoin X, Bitcoin Segwit2x X11, and even one called Bitcoin Pizza! Okay, I haven't confirmed that last one, but still! And currently, a hardfork called Bitcoin Atom is expected to happen sometime in January.
All these are more reasons I need to make some coins as soon as possible, because when a fork happens, the owner of coins on the previous blockchain automatically gets a multiple of that same amount on the new blockchain. Holders of Bitcoin at the time of the Bitcoin Diamond fork received X10 the amount of BTC they had in BCD. Now that's something!
And other currencies can fork too. As I write, there is news that Ethereum, which leads the market after bitcoin might have a hardfork to create EtherZero. However, no one is sure yet if this is a fork, or a whole new currency.
Unfortunately, the coffee shop waiters asked me to leave at this point. I had been there for over four hours while surfing the net. Time does fly, doesn't it?
Tomorrow, I'll have to find out more, especially about other currencies.
The struggle has begun!
