Well put.
I'm not threatened at all by two (or more) cyrpto-currency solutions taking their value basis from the current blockchain (which, thanks to Satoshi's 1MB patch, still fits on a single commodity-grade drive.)
I know what is important to me as a user and expect that there are a lot of others in my category. Plenty to form a viable economy which addresses problems we have in our domain.
I go so far as to welcome the split because one of the biggest problems we have, as I see it, are people who have a diametrically opposed view of what is important and how to achieve it. A 'divorce' is a perfectly rational and effective way to resolve such problems.
The only way this could possibly work is if you guys started your own chain with your own genesis block. If you split the Bitcoin chain into two competing chains you will effectively have inflated and devalued bitcoin by 50% and also killed confidence in Bitcoin's scarcity and STORE OF VALUE function.
The only way I could be wrong about this is if after this split you are cheering on I would not have double the amount of bitcoins to spend. Would I not be able to spend bitcoins on both chains??? If my bitcoins are doubled, then you have killed bitcoin for everyone.
You are way to focused on the 'money' aspect of things. The 'capabilities' aspect is what is important to me personally.
That said, ya, I'm personally not above making lemonade out of lemons. I'll exploit the shit out of the situation if I can. That's a potential fringe benefit of getting a footprint in the pre-fork chain.
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Your simplistic view is that the value basis of the Bitcoin solution is monolithic and static. I suggest that that is to simplistic. I'll explain:
Bitcoin has, locked within it, multiple sources of value. They are there but not expressed at this time. They are also mutually exclusive. I'll simplify them to two.
- One source of value can be best exposed by handing the solution off to (say) Google. They can support expansion to epic levels as they have many other related things internet. They can exploit monetization schemes denied to their lesser competitors and thus fund this immense system with probably a negative cost to the end user. Some people consider this a win. More power to them, and I'll be happy to join them for many of my exchange currency needs. Just like I use Google to filter the 20,000 spam e-mails I get per day.
- Another source of value is that Bitcoin is free of 'counter-party risk' like gold. Separately, it is not possible for anyone really to tell me who I can and cannot transact with. If I want to support Wikileaks because I feel that they are doing my country (the U.S.) a service in promoting transparency, I can use Bitcoin to do so. I can also be as confident in the blockchain as a source-of-truth for my holdings as my ability to keep certain secrets (which I am good at when I put my mind to the task.)
These two things are mutually exclusive. A split is the best way to expose both sources of value out into the '5th dimension.'
edits: slight