Bitcoin Hardfork in the Eyes of a Newbie

in #photography7 years ago

So, I have been ramping myself up to buy into Bitcoin lately. Steem has been my starting point into Cryptocurrency. I started my Steemit journey with the help of @joshsigurdson, and @jerrybanfield. Josh brought shone the light on the Steemit idea, and Jerry showed me how to use it, and suggested it's huge potential. I have learned a lot from Steemit, so far, and I still have faith that it has great long term potential. I learned to mine Gridcoin with the help of Steemit, and several Steemit users including @dutch. Not just that, I read a LOT of posts, and have learned so much more. It has been quite a trip!

Up until now, I have not put any of my own money into crypto. Other than my electrical bill. I have only put in my time, and effort. Largely, my effort has been in the form of my photographic archives.

So, in the last couple days I have been setting myself up to buy Bitcoin. I set up a wallet, and joined QuadrigaCX for funding myself. I was so close to pulling the trigger!

This morning I started watching the markets. I plan to time my initial buy in to a significant dip. It only makes sense, even for a newbie like me.

As I was researching, I became aware of the upcoming bitcoin hardfork! Now I'm confused, I have opened a door containing a whole new room of knowledge that I need to know before I buy in.

The hard fork has nuances and intricacies that even the guys who have been doing this for years and years can't even predict, or explain. I think I am going to stall my buy in, even though I might be missing out on some huge opportunities. I think I can use the time productively to learn about forks, and their ramifications.

When the fork is done, I'll have to decide which fork I want to follow. If any.

What do you guys think about it? What should a newb do?

Should I invest in something non-bitcoin? I love the idea of Steem and Steemit, but there's a lot of in-fighting going on behind the scenes, and that destabilizes the whole scheme a bit. Perhaps too much for investment. Is it strong enough to weather the storm, and come out the other side? If the developers would update the Steemit site with more features, and eliminate the latency issues with the DOS attacks and what-not, I could see it really taking off. Would that be enough? The groundwork has already been laid. Even with what we have got, it has really been adopted by a lot of people. Steemit results are regularly showing up in my google searches for non-steemit related topics.

Gridcoin is awesome! You can mine it without asic miners, so it's already got what gridcoin wishes it had. It is also doing proof of research, instead of proof of work. Which means that I get to help cure cancer, and find planet killing asteroids, crack WWII german enigma codes, and other stuff. WAY cooler than doing bullshit mindless number crunching. And anyone can do it with a PC, and step up their game with a GPU.

So, ehem... In conclusion, I'm still a confused newbie. Just like I started back in June. But I'm still having fun! That's the main thing. Something that might change once I have some skin in the game. Maybe I should just stay out of it... Hahaha!

Anyway, photo for attention. My daily driver. Peace!

Import 61 Image 26343 Date  October 18, 2015.jpg

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Well I feel you my friend! I'm a newbie too and I'm trying to figure out what is what and how things work. Both here on steemit (or busy.org that I'm using right now) and in the crypto world in general.

As far as steemit goes, I believe it's a good LONG-TERM investment. Think of it as investing in Facebook back in 2004. You would have to wait at least 5 years before your investment would sky rocket. And it's still in beta, we shouldn't forget that. Glitches are bound to happen, bugs will exist, DOSs will happen as well and improvements and new features haven't been implemented yet. Of course, it could get screwed up, but I think that as long as the community stays strong and keeps growing, it could become a major player in the social media arena.

Now, Bitcoin is a long term investment as well. You can buy some Bitcoins (or Satoshi), forget them for ten years and then come back and find your initial capital multiplied many times. For more short term gains you should turn to alt coins. But that needs research and, of course, Bitcoin is the main entrance to that market as well.

The fork gives you the chance to get the amount of BTC you have on the 25th in BTG as well. After that you can do with those BTG whatever you want. There is no reason to not claim those BTG, but exactly how that's done depends on the wallet you are using. Instructions for each wallet will come out shortly I guess. Just keep in mind that it must be a wallet for which you have the private key, like Exodus, not like Coinbase. Also, there is a concern for what is called a replay attack, which is basically charging you twice on both coins for a single transaction. Bitcoin Gold is supposed to be protected from that but until the dust settles a little, it's better to be careful.

Well, that's my two cents. Hope you find it helpful. Happy steeming!

Well, the danger is that both coins collapse due to the fork. They could potentially never bounce back. There are better coins out there already. Bitcoin is only doing so well because it was first. I am going to wait for the fork and the dust to settle. I can still get in if it goes smooth relatively early.

I don't think Bitcoin Gold is going to be a major player. There are rumors that it's a scam, that a lot of coins have been premined, the fork date kept changing etc. So the initial value is estimated to be around 5% of BTC, a lot less than Bitcoin Cash was. And I think it will decrease further as time passes.

Bitcoin's price is likely to fall as well, but only because people are buying Bitcoin in order to benefit from the free BTG and after the fork they are going to start selling. So perhaps considering this, it's wise to wait to buy a little cheaper. And sure there will be rises and falls but I think, overall, Bitcoin is going to keep rising. It is after all the system of reference of all cryptocurrencies. And there may well be better technologies out there (after all it's already 8 years old!), but I don't see it being replaced as the king of cryptocurrencies any time soon, if ever.

Maybe you can explain for me how the free BTCG happens? My understanding which could be wrong, is that your ledger entries on BTC will be copied over to the BTCG ledger. But you still only have the one account balance. If you send funds to someone from your BTCG account, you will automatically lose your BTC account for the same amount. It's not like you are doubling your amount.

The selling after the fork is the worrisome part. I can't seem to predict what will happen. I don't think anyone can. People could dump BTC, or people could dump BTCG. Probably both. The value will almost certainly go down. My plan is to pick the winner as soon as possible after the fork and scoop some up at a lower price.

Yeah the pre-mined stuff smacks of "insider trading", but in the long run, I like the goals of the coin. More decentralized means wider adoption, more accessible mining for the masses, and a slightly more decentralized coin which is one of the main goals of crypto-coins.

Hang on, it's going to be a ride!

At the moment of the fork a copy of the BTC blockchain will be created and the two coins up to that point will have the exact same ledger. After that, each will record their transactions on their respective, separate blockchains, so the blockchains will start differentiating. So when you make a transaction after the fork, let's say with BTC, that will be recorded only on the BTC blockchain, not on the BTG blockchain. So your BTGs aren't affected. Or at least they shouldn't be, if the coin is indeed protected from replay attacks.

Now, on the copied blockchain exists the same number of coins as the original, since it's an exact copy, distributed in the same way. But instead of being called BTC they are now called BTG and are mined differently from that point on. So if you have BTC at the time of the fork, as recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, you automatically have BTG on the new blockchain and just have to follow the procedure to claim them. At least that's how I understand it. I could be wrong though. Like I said I'm a newbie too! :)

As far as the selling goes, well you're right that no one can accurately predict what's going to happen. Maybe it's safer to wait and see since you are not in the game already. After all the loss of not having BTG won't be big I think. Like I said it's predicted to come out at about 5% of BTC.

And I agree with you that it's a nice concept, the re-decentralization of the mining. I just don't think their motives are that pure and thus they won't be able to persuade the people and back the new coin.

Anyway, only time will tell. Till then... Happy Steeming!

Do we have a hard date for it yet? Last I heard it was still up in the air. 28th?

I haven't heard anything of the like. Perhaps the estimated date that the block is produced has been changed? A google search didn't turn up anything though.

I stumbled, however, across this article if you want to take a look.

It is supposed to happen (publicly) on the 25th.

That doesn't leave us much time!

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