Bitcoin still has a problem
In my previous post (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@firemonkey/bitcoin-has-a-problem) I signaled a problem with bitcoin. Some major miners had switched from mining BTC to mining BCC leaving the BTC blockchain with insufficient hashing power to process all transactions. For now the problem has been solved because big miners as Antpool, BTC.TOP and F2Pool seem to have switched back to mining BTC.
This may however be a temporary solution because the general expectation is that Segwit will be implemented succesfully within 4 or 5 hours and that the BTC exchange rate will profit from that. After the implementation of Segwit however the discussion on the 2MB blocksize will continue and another hard fork seems inevitable. After that fork we will have three bitcoins: BCC, BTC1 (Bitcoin Core) and BTC2 (Segwit2x). If Blockstream doesn't support Segwit2x nobody really wants BTC2 because that was just a compromise to achieve bigger blocksizes and to avoid a fork. My expectation is that in anticipation of the fork most miners and many nodes will switch to BCC. The problem I mentioned in my previous post will return and the exchange rate of BTC will soon be affected by this.
Neither the small-blockers nor the big-blockers wants SegWit2X, with the fanatic small-blockers being against any block size increase and letting the Bitcoin Core maintainers decide the protocol development - and the fanatic big-blockers being against SegWit, for some reason or another. However, it could be that those two factions are just the most noisy factions. If both the major exchanges and more than 90% of the miners will stick to the NYA, then the SegWit2X-coin will be Bitcoin for all practical purposes, and Bitcoin Core will have to change the PoW if they want transactions to be processed at all - and if they do that, then their Bitcoin Core coin will become an insignificant altcoin.
However, some of the pressure on the 2X-part of SegWit2X has been reduced as some bigblockers are going all-in on the Bitcoin Cash project - and miners supportive of Bitcoin Core may use the defections to Bitcoin Cash as an excuse to defect the New York Agreement. We may indeed end up with three equally strong coins after the hardfork - or we may even end up with SegWit2X being "dead on arrival" if the support fades all away. In the smallblocker narrative, SegWit was successfully forced through by a majority of the nodes sticking to BIP-148, and the 2X-hardfork will fail because a majority of nodes will stick to Core.
In my opinion, there exists lots of alt-coins that are technically superior to Bitcoin, the only advantage Bitcoin has is the "first mover"-advantage ... Bitcoin has the network effect, the brand name, and strong security offered by the extreme hashing rate coming from the mining pools. Split the coin in three, and all those advantages will fade away. I'm concerned that the big winner won't be another alt-coin, but fiat.
I jokingly used to promote my very own conspiracy theory, that the schism has been cultivated by some dark forces with vested interest in the fiat system, some few leaders at both sides of the schism cooperating to manipulate people and promote the "bitcoin war" - just like Palpatine and Dooku was instigating the Clone Wars in the Star Wars triology. As time passes, this conspiracy theory just makes more and more sense to me, the Bitcoin Cash project and the small-blockers sticking to BIP-148 and 1MB blocks ... it's just crazy, both sides are actively trying to destroy Bitcoin.