Bitmain Threatens Hard Fork if User Activated Soft Fork Occurs

The bitcoin community’s “community” problem went from terrible to shit this morning as bitmain announced that if there is an attempt at a user activated soft fork on the network come August, they have all intentions of hard forking the network and splitting it in two. Not only did this send the price free falling, but it has forced people and companies who have stayed semi neutral in this debate to pick sides. By threatening a hard fork and making open plans to hard fork the network, bitmain is only dividing the community further.

I personally have lost all hope for some sort of compromise and think that now both sides are being unreasonable. You cant reason with unreasonable people and neither side will budge on their demands. Bitmain wants to keep their mining advantage via asicboost and core wont settle for anything less than what they have planned. One thing however is sure, if nothing is done to help lower transaction fees and clear up the mempool, bitcoin will not be the network that both sides want it to be.

I wholeheartedly believe that no one is trying to sabotage the entire project, they just have two completely different views of what bitcoin should be and how to get there. Maybe we are better off in the long run if bitcoin splits into two. The community is so fractured at this point that many of the old timers have left the space completely. Those who remain are sticking vehemently to one side and not budging. In the shot term though a hard fork would most likely send the network into panic and companies into disarray.

If bitmain chooses to hard fork the code, the real test will be if the companies in the bitcoin space will support them. Companies that provide infrastructure like coinbase or bitpay will probably choose a specific side and ideology over the other. Some companies will refuse to support the new hard forked coin out of principal and no matter what the support, wont accept it. Others will probably accept both because they will see financial value in it, but many industry leaders are terrified of two bitcoins.

Two bitcoins will not only confuse newcomers in the space, but also split the money that goes into bitcoin. However we are already seeing this with the current high market share of altcoins, so maybe nothing will change at all. I am curious at this point if an actual hard fork is less dangerous than keeping the status quo in bitcoin. Even if core managed to get segwit through today, there would still be fights over other scaling plans in the future. Maybe it is time both sides went their separate ways and follow the ideology which best suits them.

No matter what happens, user activated soft fork, or hard fork, we have a very unsure future ahead of us and one can only hope it works out for the best. Hope is all we have at the moment because expectations have proven to let me down. What do you think about the potential hard fork? What side would you support?