Well, the first hard fork is done. I can write again. As planned, the BTC lost 200/300$ just after the hard fork and the alt coins are rising. Bitcoin won't be a topic of discussion till 6/7th of November and the beginning of the implementation of the usual trading strategy for second hard fork.
I missed the bitcoin cash hard fork but I was always wondering what's the point of these hard forks. So, the below are my thoughts about the subject.
I'm not a Dev but the hard fork is a manual change of the blockchain
We can classify the forks in 2 types:
1/ The technical hard fork: the Devs are making a change in the blockchain in order to improve some technical features (better transaction speed/segwit, more transactions in a block/segwit2x,...)
2/ The hard fork of consensus: a part of the Dev team is not convinced by the direction of the project and this part decides to split in order to manage their project (for example: Bitcoin cash or gold). The hard fork is the official act of divorce.
A hard fork is not always ending with the creation of a new alt coins. If the consensus is really important. Then, everybody moves to the new chain (for example: Metropolis)
So, bottom line, the market is happy. We got the 'free money' but the true problem is which coin is the true bitcoin, the one which is going to survive. I will be really pissed if I'm selling my btc gold for 300$ and in 1 year it becomes the new standard with a price of 6000$... So, I think the hard forks are creating a lot of confusion for the future which is not great.
Feel free to post comments to get your opinion (and click on the upvote button to help the motivation ;) )
Disclaimer: I'm not your financial advisor and these are not financial advise+it's just a diary.
So I'm in the learning phase and was watching my friend trade instead. He unfortunately put money in for the fork but was in bittrex and they didn't pick up bitcoin gold so he has a whole lot of money in bitcoin when it went down and no split for him. We were also away when it happened so when all the alt coins jumped up he missed out on that also. hopefully you had better luck
A friend of mine had the same issue with Bitcoin cash and coinbase. It's really annoying and I put my bitcoin in a cold wallet to make sure I've got the bitcoin gold. The most frustrating part is the exchange is keeping the new altcoins till further notice.
Yea for sure that is definitely annoying. I'm sitting here with my friend right now and he's really upset, trying to trade right now but it's just so hectic. Glad you got yours though
Good luck. It's the far west out there. Only a strong community can help against the jungle.