Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Splits in Two Amid Feud (cnet.com)
Bitcoin is dividing in two. Disagreements about how to operate the cryptocurrency have led to a new strand called Bitcoin Cash, which is breaking off from the bitcoin system. From a report: Bitcoin Cash launches Tuesday in what is known as a "hard fork" from bitcoin, a virtual currency based on peer-to-peer transactions without any central authority or bank behind it. The new offshoot is a response to the increasing popularity of bitcoin, which is struggling to deal with massive numbers of transactions with its underpinning technology. The main bitcoin currency is adopting a system called Segwit2x that moves transactions out of the current blockchain, while bitcoin Cash will use bigger blocks within the blockchain. Bitcoin holders are set to receive the same amount of bitcoin cash as they have in bitcoin if the exchanges and wallets they use support the new coin, another report added. Exchanges including Kraken and ViaBTC have said they'll support both, while others like Coinbase and Poloniex have said they won't, citing uncertainty that bitcoin cash will have lasting market value.
Anyone with even a bit of a critical mind should realize fairly quickly that Bitcoin can't work in wide use or long term (and the more use, the shorter the life).
Anyone with even a bit of common sense and the ability to read some economic theory should figure out the financial theory behind Bitcoin is crap and won't work.
Anyone with any understanding of human nature and business should know instantly that centralization and fraud was all that would come of it.
But there's another sucker born every minute, and the Internet lets the con artists reach them so much more efficiently than in the old days. And then the backfire effect kicks in and they dig in their heels even if you try to help them.
I went from curious, to attempting to help those who were being drawn in, to teasing the nut cases... and now I'm at the point of schadenfreude - I just love it when idiots get scammed.
My only problem with it all now is that just because their are rubes to fleece doesn't make it OK to fleece them, nor does it make being a con artist acceptable.