You're entire argument seems to be based on this assumption. >I support the 95% chain (because I'm not insane) I fail to see how always following a majority of miners no matter what their actions somehow equates to insanity. On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 9:04 AM, Gavin Andresen via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > I keep seeing statements like this: > > On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 9:30 AM, Jonathan Toomim (Toomim Bros) via > bitcoin-dev wrote: > >> As a further benefit to hard forks, anybody who is ideologically opposed >> to the change can continue to use the old version successfully, as long as >> there are enough miners to keep the fork alive. > > > ... but I can't see how that would work. > > Lets say there is a hard fork, and 5% of miners stubbornly refuse to go > along with the 95% majority (for this thought experiment, it doesn't matter > if the old rules or new rules 'win'). > > Lets further imagine that some exchange decides to support that 5% and > lets people trade coins from that fork (one of the small altcoin exchanges > would definitely do this if they think they can make a profit). > > Now, lets say I've got a lot of pre-fork bitcoin; they're valid on both > sides of the fork. I support the 95% chain (because I'm not insane), but > I'm happy to take people's money if they're stupid enough to give it to me. > > So, I do the following: > > 1) Create a send-to-self transaction on the 95% fork that is ONLY valid on > the 95% fork (maybe I CoinJoin with a post-fork coinbase transaction, or > just move my coins into then out of an exchange's very active hot wallet so > I get coins with a long transaction history on the 95% side of the fork). > > 2) Transfer those same coins to the 5% exchange and sell them for > whatever price I can get (I don't care how low, it is free money to me-- I > will still own the coins on the 95% fork). > > I have to do step (1) to prevent the exchange from taking the > transfer-to-exchange transaction and replaying it on the 95% chain. > > I don't see any way of preventing EVERYBODY who has coins on the 95% side > of the fork from doing that. The result would be a huge free-fall in price > as I, and everybody else, rushes to get some free money from anybody > willing to pay us to remain idealogically pure. > > Does anybody think something else would happen, and do you think that > ANYBODY would stick to the 5% fork in the face of enormously long > transaction confirmation times (~3 hours), a huge transaction backlog as > lots of the 95%'ers try to sell their coins before the price drops, and a > massive price drop for coins on the 5% fork. > > -- > -- > Gavin Andresen > > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > >