What does Bitcoin Fork Mean?

What does it mean when Bitcoin forks? Bitcoin forking refers to some form of splitting that occurs during the process of network upgrade. Forking means that the Bitcoin system will be altered. When Bitcoin reaches a new height, a new blockchain will be created, potentially causing some new issues. This includes the concept of a hard fork.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, as of August 28, 2020, Ethereum ranked 9th in terms of market capitalization, accounting for about half of the total. (Note: Ethereum’s total trading volume is 200 million USD).

What does Bitcoin fork mean?

So what exactly is Bitcoin fork? Bitcoin hard fork refers to the process of protocol upgrade between different nodes in the Bitcoin network. Simply put, when a block has issues, it will split into two chains (BTC and BSV) called “Bitcoin Core” or “BCH”. According to CoinMarketCap, since January 2017, 8 blockchain projects have completed hard forks of Bitcoin, including Ethereum, EOS, and others. These blockchain projects have utilized different methods to solve this particular issue, which has sparked controversies as many people consider it a scam.

Technically speaking, these two versions are completely different. If in the past, two Bitcoin hard forks resulted in significant market fluctuations, now two completely opposite situations may occur: the first is a new form of currency proposed by the Bitcoin core development team; the second is a new encrypted asset proposed by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. Although Bitcoin has undergone multiple hard forks, many hard forks have occurred in its history. For example, after the Ethereum merger in 2018, the Ethereum Foundation decided not to support ETH as a payment tool or value storage, while other mainstream crypto companies chose to abandon ETH as an alternative solution for their payment systems. However, currently, since the Ethereum Foundation has not implemented any modification proposals for Bitcoin forks, this fork doesn’t seem to have received much attention. What does Bitcoin fork really mean? The consensus mechanism often discussed in the Bitcoin community is sharding, so there will usually be a portion of people putting them in a separate block. (Note: Bitcoin addresses starting with 1kx_0y9u have expressed their intention to establish the largest forked coin in the Bitcoin network)

However, for some miners, they want to earn money by mining Bitcoin, but they actually don’t need to do so. For example, in order to obtain rewards and ensure the security of transactions, mining pools can create a new account named “stake.bitcoin” to increase their income. Some miners are also exploring the use of the new account “stake.btc” as an alternative option.