bitcoin_fork

The Bitcoin Cash Fork Was a Dangerous Trick

The newly created Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a rushed spinoff of Bitcoin (BTC), a clonecoin of which there have been many in Bitcoin’s past. Because the name is confusing, many have taken to calling it “Bcash” to avoid buyer confusion.

There have been myriad clonecoins of various types since Bitcoin’s inception. Bitcoin Cash is a style of clone that copies Bitcoin’s codebase along with its blockchain up until a certain point. Normally when new alternative cryptocurrencies are created, developers just clone the code and not the blockchain. But Bitcoin Cash copied Bitcoin’s blockchain as well, which created a situation in which everyone that had one bitcoin suddenly also had one bitcoin cash.

The creation of Bitcoin Cash was an orchestrated scheme, rushed to the point of engendering significant safety risks. Digital currencies just don’t spontaneously appear out of nowhere. The Bitcoin Cash fork was created by a developer that wanted to increase block sizes, with the hypothetical result being more transactions being processed on the blockchain.

This might sound like a good idea, but clonecoins can be incredibly disruptive to risk management and operational demands on digital currency infrastructure companies. The cost to launch a clonecoin is minimal, but the overhead for the ecosystem to actually support it is high. As Bitcoin Cash duplicated Bitcoin, at the time of the fork every bitcoin holder now had coins on another blockchain, and therefore skin in the game. This was a type of psychological experiment to see if people as a group could be tricked into ascribing value to something created from nothing, if they were given it as a gift. This experiment seemed to work, and it put a great deal of pressure on exchanges and wallet providers to support Bitcoin Cash, whereas a new altcoin would largely just be ignored.

Some exchanges such as Coinbase simply said they would not support Bitcoin Cash and urged their users to who felt otherwise to withdraw their coins prior to August 1, when the cryptocurrency forked. I can identify with these exchanges. Having run an exchange myself, I can tell you that supporting a new coin isn’t something you rush into. Customer support teams need to be aware of the complexities and nuances so they can explain them to customers. Systems for processing deposits and withdrawals must be updated. Additional servers need to be spun up and integrated with existing systems. Security auditing and quality assurance testing must run their course. Compliance guidelines and terms of service need to be updated and reviewed by legal teams.

We have always taken a security-first approach to technology here at Blockstream, and commend exchanges for doing likewise. Exchanges are the operational end of Bitcoin infrastructure, with billions of dollars under technical management. In Bitcoin Cash, keys controlling ownership of coins are shared with real Bitcoin investments totaling $50 billion. Sharing those Bitcoin keys with untested software in order to claim a Bitcoin Cash gift is highly risky—maybe too risky.

The Bitcoin Cash chain may survive, but its value will likely dip below $100. It’s currently trading anywhere from $200 to $300 on various exchanges, but this price is artificially inflated due to many exchanges refusing to accept deposits, as well as the Bitcoin Cash blockchain not functioning properly. Bitcoin’s blockchain processes a block of transactions roughly every 10 minutes, but Bitcoin Cash average block times are an hour (sometimes with no blocks for 13 hours). This means that users are having issues with even sending their bitcoin cash to exchanges to sell off.

We can already see a correlation between when Bitcoin Cash transactions are processed and when massive selloffs take place on exchanges. Compound that with the fact that 76% of all bitcoin cash that will ever exist is already mined and waiting to be sold, that there is absolutely no Bitcoin Cash integration or support in the real world, that its codebase is being maintained by a single developer, the long-term prospects of the new cryptocurrency are unclear.

Whatever happens though, Bitcoin Cash’s birth has shown that markets can be manipulated with just a bit of computing power, a participating exchange, and a healthy dose of greed. If you’re running a digital currency exchange or wallet, beware the attack of the clonecoins.

Samson Mow is the chief strategy officer at Blockstream.

Bitcoin is expected to 'fork' today, and its price could take a dramatic hit — here's what that means

Bitcoin is about to fork in two. Flickr/tetsuya yamamoto Bitcoin users have found themselves in the middle of a civil war as developers and miners have disagreed over the future of the cryptocurrency. And it could cause bitcoin to fork.

On one hand, the core developers want to keep the blocks that make up bitcoin's network limited in their size to protect it from hacks. On the other hand, some miners want to make the blocks bigger to improve the network's speed.

That disagreement means a bitcoin "fork" could occur on Tuesday as the deadline for a decision is set for 8:20 a.m. ET.

According to a blog post from bitcoin exchange Coinbase, a fork is "change to the software of the digital currency that creates two separate versions of the blockchain with a shared history." Coinbase warns that forks can be both temporary or permanent and occur because users may disagree on the best path forward for the cryptocurrency, which could ultimately lead to it splitting in two.

Forks have occurred in cryptocurrencies before. Bitcoin's rival, Ethereum, experienced its own fork in 2016, eventually leading to the creation of the form of the cryptocurrency we know today.

As for how bitcoin will respond to Tuesday's decision, no one knows. But the majority of bets placed on the event are predicting the price will fall from here. Of the 470 people who bet on the event on Bodog, "310 people think the price will dip below $2,000 per coin," according to a company spokesperson.

"No matter what happens on August 1, this date will be considered an important event preceded and followed by increasing levels of volatility in prices of Bitcoin and potentially its peers (Litecoin and Ethereum)," Stefan Qin and Justin Ledbetter of Virgil Capital told Business Insider. "Scalability is an issue, and short-term risks of resolving it are much smaller than the long-term risks of not doing anything about it."

Bitcoin is up 189% in 2017, trading at $2,808 a coin.

Markets Insider

Bitcoin splits in 2

Bitcoin-themed balloons at the "Inside Bitcoins: The Future of Virtual Currency Conference" in New York. Reuters/Lucas Jackson

Bitcoin power brokers were unable to come behind a single solution that would have preserved a unified cryptocurrency by Tuesday morning's deadline.

As such, the digital currency has officially forked and split in two: bitcoin cash and bitcoin.

Miners were able to seek out bitcoin cash beginning Tuesday morning, and the cryptocurrency-focused news website CoinDesk said the first bitcoin cash was mined at about 2:20 p.m. ET.

"There seems to be some technical issues that might be slowing it down, but yes, the fork has happened," Peter Borovykh of Blockchain Driven, a blockchain technology company, told Business Insider earlier on Tuesday.

Miners are the folks who solve complex computer problems using software to unleash digital coins into the market. It took a couple of hours after the official fork for miners to unlock the first bitcoin cash coins.

"It seems as if people overestimated the mining power, or the support from miners — hence, it is taking far longer than most expected," Iqbal Gandham, the UK managing director at the social investment network eToro, said in a statement sent to Business Insider just before the split.

Bitcoin was the first digital currency built on blockchain technology, in which transactions are independently verified by the network without the need of a middleman like a bank. Bitcoin cash is built on the same blockchain network as bitcoin, but the new software increases the size of the "blocks" that make up the network to allow it to process more information.

Supporters of the newly formed bitcoin cash believe the currency will "breath new life into" the nearly 10-year-old bitcoin by addressing some of the issues facing bitcoin of late, such as slow transaction speeds.

Bitcoin power brokers have been squabbling over the rules that should guide the cryptocurrency's blockchain network.

On one side are the so-called core developers. They are in favor of smaller bitcoin blocks, which they say are less vulnerable to hacking. On the other side are the miners, who want to increase the size of blocks to make the network faster and more scalable.

Until last week, the solution known as Segwit2x, which would double the size of bitcoin blocks to 2 megabytes, seemed to have universal support.

Servers for data storage seen at Advania's Thor Data Center in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland. Thomson Reuters

Then bitcoin cash came along. The solution is a fork of the bitcoin system. The new software has all the history of the old platform; however, bitcoin cash blocks have a capacity 8 megabytes.

Bitcoin cash came out of left field, according to Charles Morris, a chief investment officer of NextBlock Global, an investment firm with digital assets.

"A group of miners who didn't like SegWit2x are opting for this new software that will increase the size of blocks from the current 1 megabyte to 8," Morris told Business Insider.

To be sure, only a minority of bitcoin miners and bitcoin exchanges have said they will support the new currency.

Investors who have their bitcoin on exchanges or wallets that support the new currency will soon see their holdings double, with one unit in bitcoin cash added for every bitcoin. But that doesn't mean the value of investors' holdings will double.

Because bitcoin cash will initially draw its value from bitcoin's market cap, it will most likely cause bitcoin's value to drop by an amount proportional to its adoption. Bitcoin was already trading down by 5.78% at $2,715 on Tuesday following word that bitcoin cash had gone live. Morris told Business Insider that bitcoin cash was trading in the futures market for about $200 to $400 last week, suggesting that's the range it would fall in during regular trading.

Kraken, a bitcoin exchange, tweeted Tuesday morning that it was experiencing delays getting bitcoin cash to show on user's accounts.

"Please note," the exchange said, that bitcoin cash "balances have not been credit yet." It added that it was "working to credit as soon as possible."

Numerous exchanges have said they won't back bitcoin cash.

"In the event of two separate blockchains after August 1, 2017 we will only support one version," David Farmer, the director of Biz Ops at Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, wrote in a blog post. "We have no plans to support the bitcoin cash fork."

Coinbase has served nearly 9 million customers across 32 countries, according to the firm's website. The firm has enabled the exchange of over $20 billion worth of digital currency.

But just because some big players won't get behind it doesn't necessarily mean bitcoin cash will be a dud or that it couldn't eventually usurp the original bitcoin. Miners may rally behind bitcoin cash if it turns out to be the better digital currency.

"Bitcoin cash has a chance to become the dominant cryptocurrency contingent upon its ability to gain trust and support from both current and new players as well as security of its network," Borovykh of Blockchain Driven said. "Due to, at least temporary, solution of the scalability issues, bitcoin cash could attract more new capital to the entire crypto space, thus helping increase overall market cap."

Arthur Hayes, the CEO of BitMEX, a bitcoin derivative exchange, told Business Insider he thought a fork would benefit the cryptocurrency in the long run after some short-term volatility and confusion.

"There are people with billions of dollars of skin in the game," Hayes said. "And they will ultimately go with the superior bitcoin network, and the market will follow."

Bitcoin Just Avoided a Massive Breakup, But It's Getting a Little One Instead

The Bitcoin community has finally done what for years seemed impossible, pulling together to approve a software upgrade, known as Segwit2x, intended to increase network capacity. That has forestalled the looming threat of a potentially damaging “fork” that could have split the network.

But, unsurprisingly, not all of Bitcoin’s players are happy with the solution. A relatively small faction, spearheaded by former Facebook engineer Amaury Sechet, still believes that Segwit2x doesn’t go far enough in scaling Bitcoin’s capacity. Sechet’s faction says that on August 1st, they’ll launch a fork known as Bitcoin Cash, and take some of Bitcoin’s processing power with them.

Bitcoin Cash is planned to have a bigger “block size” than Bitcoin after Segwit2x, ostensibly giving it more capacity to handle transactions with low fees. But it won’t implement the SegWit upgrade that allows more transactions to be handled by secondary systems.

Bitcoin proper will be basically unaffected by the creation of the new cryptocurrency, and all holders of Bitcoin will get equivalent funds in Bitcoin Cash on the day of the fork. A futures market for Bitcoin Cash has already emerged, and currently values it at around 13% of Bitcoin’s price. That means that when the split happens, something like $6 billion in new market value will be created from thin air.

Whether that value lasts, though, will hinge on whether cryptocurrency leaders and investors believe in Bitcoin Cash’s technical vision—and so far, the signals are decidedly mixed. Many prominent cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase and Bitstamp, have said they won’t support Bitcoin Cash. Investors who want a piece of the action are being advised to move their Bitcoins either to a wallet they control directly, or to an exchange that has pledged to pass Bitcoin Cash along to them, currently including Kraken and Bitfinex.

Bitcoin.org Hard Fork Policy

Contentious hard forks are bad for Bitcoin. At the very best, a contentious hard fork will leave people who chose the losing side of the fork feeling disenfranchised. At the very worst, it will make bitcoins permanently lose their value. In between are many possible outcomes, but none of them are good.

The danger of a contentious hard fork is potentially so significant that Bitcoin.org has decided to adopt a new policy:

Bitcoin.org will not promote software or services that will leave the previous consensus because of an intentional and contentious hard fork attempt.

This policy applies to full node software, such as Bitcoin Core, software forks of Bitcoin Core, and alternative full node implementations.

It also applies to wallets and services that have the ability to detect the contentious hard fork, and which release code or make announcements indicating that they will cease operating on the side of the previous consensus. It does not apply to software that cannot detect the contentious hard fork and which continues doing whatever it would’ve done anyway.

To be clear, we encourage wallet authors and service providers to offer their opinions on hard fork proposals, and we will not penalize anyone for contributing to a discussion. We will only stop promoting particular wallets and services if they plan to move their users onto a contentious hard fork by default.

Bitcoin Network Shaken by Blockchain Fork

Yesterday, the Bitcoin network experienced one of the most serious hiccups that we have seen in the past four years. Starting from block 225430, the blockchain literally split into two, with one half of the network adding blocks to one version of the chain, and the other half adding to the other. For the next six hours, there were effectively two Bitcoin networks operating at the same time, each with its own version of the transaction history. The split lasted for 24 blocks or 6 hours, finally resolving itself when one version of the chain conclusively pulled ahead of the other at block 225454, leaving the other chain largely abandoned, with only a small number of miners that are incapable of recognizing what has now become the main chain still mining it, while the bulk of the network quickly returned to normal.

The fork was first noticed at about 23:30 GMT on Monday, March 11, when “thermoman” on the bitcoin-dev IRC channel mentioned that “some client told my client it (the other host) had 225431 blocks, but blockexplorer says that currently the block count is at 225430″. Some other blockchain resources also showed 225430 blocks. Over the course of the next thirty minutes, other users started reporting more strange reports from Bitcoin client logs. Bitcoin developer Peter Wuille (“sipa” on IRC) claimed that he was on block 225435, and then soon 225439, while other sources were still reporting 225431. At 00:00 GMT March 12, sipa posted “I wonder if there’s something that triggered it on the network, a large reorganization or so”. It turned out that a blockchain reorganization, an event that happens when a client discovers a new blockchain longer (and therefore more likely to be valid) than the one it was working with before, and switches to it, was indeed what happened, and over the next few minutes everyone realized what was going on: a blockchain fork.

What had happened was the following. The latest version 0.8 release of bitcoind, by far the most popular implementation of Bitcoin used by miners, switched the database that it used to store blocks and transactions from BerkeleyDB to the more efficient LevelDB as part of an effort to reduce blockchain synchronization time. However, what the developers did not realize at the time was that by doing so they also accidentally introduced a change to the rules of the Bitcoin protocol. In order to make an update to the database, the database process must make a “lock” on the part of the database which stores that particular item of information, a mechanism implemented to prevent two changes from occurring simultaneously and accidentally corrupting the database. In a b-tree, the data structure used by BerkeleyDB to store objects, two locks are required per update. However, BerkeleyDB requires its users to set a limit to the number of locks that can be made at the same time; “If the values are too small,” the FAQ page warns, “requests for locks in an application will fail. If the values are too large, the locking subsystem will consume more resources than is necessary.” In the case of Bitcoin, the limit was 10,000. What happened in block 225430 was that a single block simultaneously affected the status of over 5,000 transactions, requiring more than 10,000 locks on the b-tree to be made at the same time. As a result, the BerkeleyDB failed, and so the older bitcoind 0.7 (and earlier versions) could not read the block. In the case of bitcoind 0.8, LevelDB has no such restrictions, so it could accept such blocks just fine. Because the Bitcoin protocol builds up the transaction history, used primarily to calculate and agree on everyone’s account balances, by creating new blocks representing roughly ten-minute time intervals’ worth of transactions on top of existing valid blocks in a chain (hence, “blockchain”), miners using bitcoind 0.8 started building up a version of the blockchain that included the offending block, while miners using bitcoind 0.7 rejected it and started working on a another blockchain of their own. Ordinary users using BitcoinQt 0.7 or platforms that rely on bitcoind 0.7 as a server saw the 0.7 fork, and everyone else saw the 0.8 fork.

With the fork in progress, the Bitcoin developers had a choice: do they support the 0.8 fork or the 0.7 fork? Ultimately, there could only be one; a monetary system cannot function if there are two different databases of how much money each person has. The 0.8 fork had much more computing power behind it, and was already eight blocks ahead by the time the community could muster any effort toward fixing the problem, and upgrading to 0.8 is something that will have to be done eventually. On the other hand, if the 0.8 fork took over, thousands of users on 0.7 would be forced to upgrade in order to use Bitcoin at all, something which would not happen if the 0.7 fork took over since both versions of bitcoind can read it. The developers quickly settled on 0.7, and the community set to work on the next task: notifying major miners and mining pool operators of what they need to do.

Over the next few hours, nearly every major Bitcoin developer and mining pool operator joined the bitcoin-dev IRC channel. Major mining pools that were using bitcoind 0.8 shut down, downgraded to 0.7, and switched back on. Merchants were also notified; most large businesses, including BitcoinStore, BitPay, SatoshiDice and MtGox, shut down deposits to protect themselves from double spend attacks. BitPay quickly turned themselves back on once their servers were on the 0.7 fork; “safe mode alerted us there’s a problem,” BitPay’s Tony Gallippi writes. “That’s when Steve jumped on IRC to see where the consensus was going, and we were back in business very quickly.” Progress on switching hash power to 0.8 appeared to be slow at first, and at block 225451, the 0.8 chain was 13 blocks longer than 0.7. But that was the furthest that the 0.8 chain would get ahead. By then, the two chains were growing roughly in lockstep, and at about 03:30 the tipping point came. The 0.7 chain quickly caught up to being only 10 blocks behind, then 8 blocks, and at 06:19 both chains converged to the same length at block 225454, leading to nearly all remaining miners abandoning the other.

This incident will go down in history as one of the closest moments that we have come to the underlying Bitcoin protocol actually failing. But it is not the most serious breach ever made. In August 2010, a transaction in block 74638 contained two outputs summing to over 184 billion – just over 2^64 satoshis. The result was an integer overflow bug, the digital equivalent of a mechanical odometer wrapping around to zero after the car drives 999,999 kilometers. The overflow caused the software to think that the transaction contained only a small amount of BTC while in reality the outputs together had thousands of times more than the 21 million that should ever exist. A new version of the Bitcoin software had to be published, the blockchain was forked, and a new, valid, chain overtook the old one at block 74691 – 53 blocks after the original fork. This time, it only took 24 blocks, and it was not even a life-critical threat to the system – if the developers had done nothing, then Bitcoin would have carried on nonetheless, only causing inconvenience to those bitcoind and BitcoinQt users who were on 0.7 and would have had to upgrade. The economic damage was significant, but fairly small; the only monetary losses that have been reported are the $26,000 USD worth of mining block rewards from the 24 mined blocks of 25 BTC that are now forever lost in the now abandoned chain, as well as a $10,000 double spend against OKPay. Aside from the lost mining revenue and this double spend, transactions were not affected and no bitcoins were “lost”; any transaction that was included in the now abandoneded chain was included in the new chain as well, so any bitcoins that were spent during the fork are now at their proper destinations.

In a way, this was the best possible time for such a thing to happen. The Bitcoin price was on a steady uptrend, and so the 24% drop in price that occurred at the time of the incident was quickly reversed, and as of the time of this writing Bitcoin stands at $44-$46, down from $48 the day earlier but up from $36 one week before. Public media attention on Bitcoin is very much positive, and rather than attacking Bitcoin as they would have in 2011 many journalists actually praised the Bitcoin development team on their rapid response. Ars Technica’s Timothy B Lee wrote a neutral piece on the event, writing that “the incident will be an important test of the cryptocurrency’s decentralized governance structure”, and an article at ecurrency.ec on the subject was entitled “Bitcoin software bug has been rapidly resolved”.

However, the incident opens up serious questions about the nature of the Bitcoin protocol, and puts into the spotlight some uncomfortable facts about Bitcoin’s notion of “decentralization”. Most security protocols, including encryption algorithms, hash algorithms and full-scale protocols, have dozens of implementations in many different programming languages, and the protocol specification is determined by a clear standard against which any individual implementation can be checked for compliance. In the case of Bitcoin, however, things are different. Although there is technically a standard on the Bitcoin wiki pages, it has at times been poorly updates, and the reality is that the bitcoind implementation is the standard, and nearly all miners on the Bitcoin network are using some version of it. There are a few alternative implementations, the most complete one being Amir Taaki’s libbitcoin, with Mike Hearn’s BitcoinJ (written in Java) close behind, but so far they have gained very little traction in use with mining, and, what’s more, there is a small portion of the Bitcoin development community which is actively against the idea of using multiple codebases.

Fortunately, most Bitcoin developers do not support this viewpoint, although many have come out in favor of keeping a healthy level of prudence. Mike Hearn wrote the following on the Bitcointalk forums in June 2011:

Gavin wrote to me only days after the BitCoinJ release to tell me how happy he was to see an alternative implementation. Satoshi expressed very similar sentiments. Nobody is against alternative implementations.
What some people, especially Satoshi, have said is that there’s an unusual amount of risk involved with reimplementing the full system and using that reimplementation to mine. Bitcoin is very complex and if you aren’t skilled and very thorough you are likely to diverge from its behavior in small, hard to detect ways. This can fork the chain and split the economy. It’s one of the few things that could instantly kill Bitcoin beyond legal harassment of its users.

Lead Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen replied to another poster in the same thread: “Really? I’ve been encouraging alternative implementations, who is the power-hungry core developer?”, and in November 2012 he wrote in a Bitcoin Foundation update that “part of the solution is to encourage alternative implementations that make different trust/convenience tradeoffs than the reference implementation. There has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work on cross-implementation testing (the “testnet3″ blockchain contains hundreds of transaction validation test cases, for example), and new features are being added to the protocol to support alternative implementations”

But alternative implementations are not just useful for supporting different trust/convenience tradeoffs. They are also crucial in making Bitcoin’s claim of decentralization a reality. If there had instead been five distinct Bitcoin implementation in use at the time of the fork, what would have happened is that one of the five would have recognized the wrong blockchain and forked off, leading to a loss of revenue for a small number of miners and requiring the users of clients using that implementation to upgrade. The aberrant implementation’s fork of the blockchain would end up much weaker than the others right from the start, so the risk of double spend attacks would be minimal. One can argue that there will be a greater number of forking incidents with more implementations, but each one will be smaller in effect, and testing all implementations together on the testnet before release would reduce the number of bugs that slip into production software to about the same frequency as we see today.

The other aspect of Bitcoin’s decentralization that this incident calls into question is that of mining pools. The reason why the controlled switch to the 0.7 fork was even possible was that over 70% of the Bitcoin network’s hash power was controlled by a small number of mining pools and ASIC miners, and so the miners could all be individually contacted and convinced to immediately downgrade. Another article on the fork reads [Russian]: “the real problem is not even in the code supporting the Bitcoin network; bugs are everywhere. Rather, it’s the matter of who controls it. This event clearly showed that even such a well thought-out system is controlled by the will of a very small number of people – particularly, the operators of mining pools. Over 70% of new blocks right now are being found on pools, and not on individual solo miners. The underlying idea of the system was that the benevolent majority can stop a small number of attackers, but in the present time it is simply not working. The winner in a possible takeover will be the one with greater computing power, and no one else.” Bitcoin is clearly not at all the direct democracy that many of its early adherents imagined, and, some worry, if a centralized core of the Bitcoin community is powerful enough to successfully undertake these emergency measures to set right the Bitcoin blockchain, what else is it powerful enough to do? Force double spends to reverse million-dollar thefts? Block or even redirect transactions known to originate from Silk Road? Perhaps even modify Bitcoin’s sacred 21 million currency supply limit?

However, a strong argument can be made that such fears are very unlikely to materialize. The reason why has nothing to do with the specific identities of the Bitcoin mining pool operators or the cohesiveness of the Bitcoin mining community; rather, it’s the fact that Bitcoin mining is still in fact quite decentralized; it simply is decentralized in a different way. Taking a political analogy, the closest equivalent would be a liquid democracy: a hybrid of direct and representative democracy where people can either vote for individual bills by themselves or assign politicians – with the proviso that if they do not like what a given politician is doing they can switch to assigning their voting power to someone else at any time. Back in the world of Bitcoin, although much of the Bitcoin network’s hash power is concentrated with mining pool operators in practice, every individual miner can switch from one pool to another almost instantly, so if a coalition of mining pool operators decides to start violating the Bitcoin protocol miners can simply switch to any pool that remains honest, instantly depriving the miscreants of their power. Although no mining pool has attempted to actively subvert the Bitcoin protocol so far, this kind of “voting” has been done before; in 2011, there were several incidents where the mining pool Deepbit pushed above 50% of the total network hash power, and in each case there was a mass exodus of miners toward other pools to balance things out. Although the nominal power may rest with the mining pool operators, the feedback of the community is always only one step away.

Altogether, the incident was handled very well, and all parts of the Bitcoin community should congratulate themselves for their speedy resolution of the problem and their unconditional cooperation. The Bitcoin community is not always in perfect harmony; Bitcoin gambling site SatoshiDice and a number of Bitcoin developers, notably Luke Dashjr, are usually at odds over concerns that SatoshiDice’s large transaction count is bloating the Bitcoin blockchain, but yesterday differences were laid aside as the community worked together to solve the problem. We also learned a lot, and merchants are likely to be much more prepared for such incidents in the future, perhaps implementing techniques like automatic fork detection to handle forks and avoid double spends without immediate manual intervention. Before today, many people knew that some test for the Bitcoin network would come, whether at the 1 MB block size limit or else where, but just how the community would handle such a thing was an unknown. Now, the test has come and gone, and how the Bitcoin community handled the test is known to everyone: we passed with flying colors.

Upcoming Bitcoin Forks in 2018 – Here’s What to Watch For

Last updated on May 8th, 2018 at 03:58 pm

Back in August 2017, the first coin created from a Bitcoin fork came into existence: Bitcoin Cash. However, since then, two other coins have also been “forked” from Bitcoin: Bitcoin Gold (October 2017) and Bitcoin Diamond (November 2017). Most people are still wondering what these forks are, how they happen, and how one can profit from them. Here’s my take on all of this.

What you will learn in this video

• What is a Bitcoin fork?
• Why should you be interested in forks?
• What are the dangers surrounding forks?
• How to safely claims coins from hard forks?
• What are the upcoming Bitcoin forks?

What the hell is a Bitcoin fork?

We discussed Bitcoin forks back when Bitcoin Cash was just coming out. If you want the full explanation, you can read the original post. If you want the quick and dirty explanation, keep on reading this post.

A fork is basically an alteration of the current Bitcoin code (or protocol). It means someone is changing the rules.

Imagine you’re playing a game with thousands of people from all around the world and then someone says, “Let’s change the rules.” Normally, for the game to work properly, everyone needs to agree on the rules being changed. If that happens, then the change is implemented and everything continues as normal.

If there isn’t a large consensus about the change, two versions of the game will be created (one with the old rules and one with the new rules)—in other words, there will be a fork in the game.

The same can happen with Bitcoin’s code. Generally speaking, when a fork happens, you’ll have an “original Bitcoin” and a “new Bitcoin.” For example, Bitcoin Cash changed the block size from 1 MB to 8 MB so more transactions could be processed with each block. There were those who supported this change and switched to a new coin called Bitcoin Cash (or Bcash), and there were those who decided to stay with the original rules and keep using the original Bitcoin.

Of course, this is a very simplified explanation of forks—not all forks are created equal. There are soft forks, which allow the new rules to play well with the old rules, and there are hard forks, which don’t allow this and create a totally different coin. All of the Bitcoin forks you’re hearing about lately are actually hard forks.

Why should I even care about a fork?

Great question! There are several reasons you should care about a fork:

1. You may want to switch over to the new rules and the new coin because you think it’s better than using the original Bitcoin.
2. The fork could have an impact on the Bitcoin community, Bitcoin’s adoption, and even Bitcoin’s price (we’ll get to that later on).
3. You may want to profit from the fork by selling the new coins that are delivered to every Bitcoin holder.

Wait, what? I get free coins?

Yes. Let’s go back to our game analogy.

Imagine your game has been running for a very long time, and you’ve managed to accumulate a considerable amount of points in it. Now someone wants to change the rules but doesn’t want everybody to lose their points, so the new game will start at a certain point in time, and everyone will have the same amount of points they accumulated up until that point.

If, for example, you had 150 points in the original game, you could switch to the new game and still have 150 points. You could also play both games in parallel and have 150 points in each. Now let’s see how this works with Bitcoin.

When a fork occurs, the people who decide on forking Bitcoin say, “Look, we don’t like the original rules—we want to create new rules. So starting from block number 453,342 (for example), we’ll change to the new rules.” Anyone who had Bitcoins at the time of the fork will now have two Bitcoins: the original one and the new one. You can decide which one to use, or you can even use both.

If for example, you have 1 Bitcoin in your possession when the fork occurs, you’ll still have that 1 Bitcoin, but you’ll also be able to claim 1 “new Bitcoin” on the network that’s running the “new Bitcoin rules” (since that coin didn’t start out from scratch and is continuing the original Bitcoin’s history).

It can get a bit confusing, but the main point to remember is this:

When a Bitcoin fork occurs, anyone holding any amount of Bitcoins will get the same amount of the new currency as well. This doesn’t happen automatically; you do need to claim these coins, but each new coin has a different claiming mechanism, and we won’t be able to cover them all.

Once you claim your new coins, you can then hold on to them or sell them if they’re being traded on an exchange. This means that you can basically generate money for nothing; all you did was claim coins from thin air and sell them on an exchange.

Easy money! Or is it?

The dangers of Bitcoin forks

When the forking trend started out with Bitcoin Cash, it seemed that the fork was a legitimate way of expressing discontent with the road Bitcoin was taking (hence a fork in the road).

However, it seems like the more recent forks are pretty similar to each other, and the main reason for creating them has more to do with marketing than actual ideology. If someone thinks they can create a better coin than Bitcoin, they can create a brand new altcoin—there’s no need to create a Bitcoin clone.

Devs decide to fork Bitcoin for three main reasons (in my opinion, at least):

1. Marketing buzz: Bitcoin forks are the new ICOs. Everyone is looking to get free coins, so people are actively looking for information (you’re reading this article, aren’t you?). What better way to get eyes on your project without a lot of work? Just say you’re forking Bitcoin and you’re done.
2. Quick money for devs: Some of these forks aren’t really copies of Bitcoin’s history. The rules are changed in such a way that devs receive a large initial amount of the new coin, which they can then dump onto the market once the coin starts trading.
3. Scams: Some forks are flat-out scams. There’s already been one reported scam: Bitcoin Platinum. Scams can come in the form of forks that are created to short Bitcoin’s price (e.g., Bitcoin Platinum) or something more elaborate such as forks that are created to steal users’ real Bitcoins in the process of claiming the new coin (e.g., Bitcoin Gold fake wallet).

As you can see, claiming coins from a fork entails a considerable amount of risk from the user’s side.

How to safely claim coins from a fork

First, I’d suggest reading a bit about the project. Find out who the developers are, what their track record is, how far along they are in their road map, what have other publications written about them, and the like. If all that makes sense to you, then perhaps the fork is indeed legit.

However, even if a fork is legit, it doesn’t mean it’s worth going through the hassle of claiming its coins. The claiming process is usually complicated, and you risk losing your coins if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. Say you’re holding 0.5 Bitcoins, and you’re eligible for 0.5 Bitcoin Gold. I’m not sure the immediate profit is worth the risk. This is, of course, a personal decision you should make.

For example, one of the most important things that a forked coin has to implement is something called replay protection. It basically means that the network will be able to separate the new coin from the original one and not accidentally send the original one to the new coin address when claiming the forked coin.

If, in the end, you decide you want to claim your coins, I suggest that you follow guides only from well-known wallets (i.e., TREZOR, Ledger, etc.) or credited publications. Keep in mind that in the end, it’s your money, and no publication will be able to take responsibility if you do something wrong along the way—even if they accidentally published misinformation (as we unfortunately once did in the past).

What I’m trying to say is that it’s a risky business. Make sure to understand the process and make your own choices.

If you do decide to claim forked coins you need to make sure your Bitcoins are in a wallet that allows you access to the private keys. This means you need to get your Bitcoins off exchanges and other web wallets before the fork occurs. If you don’t have access to your private keys you won’t be able to extract the forked coin.

Once the fork occurs you’ll need to do two things:

1. Send your Bitcoins to a new wallet with a different private key
2. Upload your old private key to a wallet that supports the forked coin

Since each fork is different it’s hard to say which wallet will support each fork. Usually the official fork site will display the wallets and exchanges that support it. If you leave your coins on an exchange that supports the fork there’s a good chance you can avoid extracting the coins yourself and that the exchange will do it for you, however you are basically at their mercy.

Remember, the one rule you should always follow before trying to claim any coins is to move your Bitcoins to a new wallet with a new seed phrase. This move will reduce the chances of you losing your Bitcoin to almost zero.

Upcoming Bitcoin forks for 2017-2018

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s review the upcoming Bitcoin forks.

IMPORTANT: None of these forks have been verified by our team. You are forking your coins at your own risk. Please make sure to do proper research before taking action on any fork.

Super Bitcoin (SBTC)

Fork Date: 12/12/2017 — Block 498,888

Changes from original protocol: smart contracts, Lightning Network, zero-knowledge proofs, 8 MB block size

Distribution method: 1 BTC = 1 SBTC

Super Bitcoin aims to “make Bitcoin great again,” although the developers accept the idea as an experiment. It incorporates the best proposals from the Bitcoin community to see how all the forefront technologies combine.

BitcoinX (BCX)

Fork Date: 12/12/2017 — Block 498,888

Changes from original protocol: combining zero-knowledge proof, smart contract, DPOS consensus, crosschain technology data, SegWit, Lightning Network

Distribution method: 1BTC = 10,000 BCX

BitcoinX is designed to release the full potential of Bitcoin in a scalable way for the future. By combining speed, smart contracts, and privacy, the development team is looking to build a cryptocurrency to suit modern society.

Lightning Bitcoin (LBTC)

Fork Date: 18/12/2017 — Block 499,999

Changes from original protocol: DPoS Consensus, three-second block time, 2 MB block size, no difficulty adjustment, smart contracts

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1 LBTC

Lightning Bitcoin pushes the boundaries of blockchain speed with bigger block sizes that are created in seconds rather than minutes. The addition of smart contracts and DPoS consensus should allow for a truly high-speed autonomous network.

Bitcoin God (GOD)

Fork Date: 25/12/2017 — Block 501,225

Changes from original protocol: no pre-mine, proof of stake, smart contracts, Lightning Network, large block size

Distribution method: 1 BTC = 1 GOD

Some details are still to be confirmed for Bitcoin God, but the branding is rather catchy. Proof of stake, smart contracts, and Lightning Network will make for an interesting change to the usual Bitcoin protocols.

Bitcoin Cash Plus (BCP)

Fork Date: 2/1/2018 — Block 501,407

Changes from original protocol: No pre-mine, SigHash, emergency difficulty adjustment (EDA), 8 MB block size

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1 BCP

Bitcoin Cash Plus throws more confusion into the Bitcoin industry. Is it that much different from the hotly tipped Bitcoin Cash? Zero pre-mining is a healthy way to start, but little information is available on its website.

Bitcoin Uranium (BUM)

Fork Date: Around 31/12/2017 — Block not yet announced

Changes from original protocol: No pre-mine, one-minute block time, SegWit, unique address format

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1 BUM

Bitcoin Uranium wants to send rippling shockwaves through Bitcoin and reinitiate a truly decentralized currency. Quick block times combined with Equihash will allow GPU/CPU mining aims to open up mining to everybody.

Bitcoin Atom (BCA)

Fork Date: January 2018 — Block 505888

Changes from original protocol: Hybrid consensus (PoS and PoW), Lightning Network, Hash time-locked contracts

Distribution method: 1 BTC = 1 BCA

Bitcoin Atom focuses its efforts on consensus modeling and off-chain transactions. A new form of combined Proof of Stake and Proof of Work may allow for increased security, while the Lightning Network creates “atomic swaps.”

Bitcoin Silver (BTCS)

Fork Date: December 2017 — Block not yet announced

Changes from original protocol: 30-second block time, SegWit, every block difficulty adjustment

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1 BTS

Bitcoin Silver remains mysterious, especially given that there’s no working website or cohesive Github. Speedy block times mixed with SegWit is an interesting scaling idea, but we’ve yet to see any details that are set in stone.

UnitedBitcoin (UB)

Fork Date: 12.12.17 – Block 498777

Changes from original protocol: No-premine, 8mb block size, Segwit, Replay protection, Smart contracts, Lightning network

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1UB

UnitedBitcoin is literally trying to make everyone happy. It takes a mesh of BTC, BCH and Ethereum ideas and combines them on its blockchain. It’s a lot to take in for one cryptocurrency but why not have it all?

Bitcoin Diamond (BCD)

Fork Date: 24.11.17 – Block 495866

Changes from original protocol: No-premine, 8mb block size, Replay protection, Encrypted amounts, 210 million supply

Distribution method: 1BTC = 10BCD

Bitcoin Diamond’s design is another build on Bitcoin Cash with the 8mb block size. Diamond builds privacy and extra supply into this model. It wants to make Bitcoin more affordable whilst keeping transaction amounts encrypted.

Bitcoin Oil (OBTC)

Fork Date: 12.12.17 – Block 498888

Changes from original protocol: No-premine, Proof of Stake, CPU mining, 1.5 minute block interval, Every block difficulty adjustment, 2mb block size

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1OBTC

Bitcoin Oil has no actual relation to the real world commodity, it is simply a metaphor for the project. There are millions of unclaimed fork coins and token laying dormant, using OBTC’s blockchain protocol unclaimed coins are redistributed as block rewards.

Bitcoin World (BTW)

Fork Date: 17.12.17 – Block 499777

Changes from original protocol: 210 billion supply, 8mb block size, Equihash PoW, Replay protection

Distribution method: 1BTC = 10000BTW

Bitcoin World is another effort to bring Bitcoin back to the ordinary person. Added supply level coupled with Equihash mining should lower prices while making mining more accessible.

Bitcoin Stake (BTCS)

Fork Date: 19.12.17 – Block 499999

Changes from original protocol: Proof of Stake consensus

Distribution method: 1BTC = 100BTCS

Bitcoin Stake focuses on its consensus method for a more sustainable cryptocurrency. The Proof of Stake mining protocol breaks the control of large PoW miners and offers a more eco friendly option.

Bitcoin Faith (BTF)

Fork Date: 19.12.17 – Block 500000

Changes from original protocol: Zero knowledge privacy, Smart contracts, 8mb block size, Lightning network

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BTF

You’ve got to have a little faith in Bitcoin right? But which one? Bitcoin Faith. A mixture of leading features including 8mb block size and lightning network aims to set up a brighter future for cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Top (BTT)

Fork Date: 26.12.17 – Block 501118

Changes from original protocol: 8mb block size, Segwit, Replay protection,

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BTT

Bitcoin Top aims to be ‘better than better’, ‘the top Bitcoin’ but it has a long way to go after a late 2017 fork. 8mb block size coupled with Segwit makes up its way of scaling cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin File (BIFI)

Fork Date: 27.12.17 – Block 501225

Changes from original protocol: Increased block size, Smart contracts, Content network

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1000BIFI

Bitcoin File aims to be more than just a currency, it wants to provide a global content network. Using a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, BIFI is trying to create an effective, secure and environmentally friendly storage network.

Bitcoin Segwit2X X11 (B2X)

Fork Date: 28.12.17 – Block 501451

Changes from original protocol: Segwit2x X11 encryption algorithm, Upto 4mb block size, 2.5 minute block time, Every block difficulty adjustment, Reply protection

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1B2X

Not to be confused with the previous cancelled fork SegWit2X. This is a different operation but in many ways very similar. Segwit with increased block size resembles the original fork proposal and B2X now adds a 2.5 minute block generation time.

Bitcoin Pizza (BPA)

Fork Date: 01.01.18 – Block 501888

Changes from original protocol: Directed Acyclic Graph technology (DAG)

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BPA

Bitcoin Pizza is forking the legacy blockchain data and moving forward with a completely different angle. DAG technology, as we have seen with the IOTA altcoin, is thought of as a faster network style, although trust and consensus are issues with Pizza.

Bitcoin Smart (BCS)

Fork Date: 21.01.18 – Block 505050

Changes from original protocol: 2.1 billion supply, Equihash mining, 8mb block size, Segwit, Replay protection, No premine, Smart Contract

Distribution method: 1BTC = 100BCS

Bitcoin Smart integrates a staggering selection of features grabbing protocols from everywhere. The highlights of Segwit, 8mb blocks and equihash are accompanied by smart contracts for a really nifty selection.

Bitcoin Interest (BCI)

Fork Date: 22.01.18 – Block 505083

Changes from original protocol: Equihash mining, Savings feature, Every block difficulty adjustment, Segwit, Replay protection, Earn interest

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BCI

Bitcoin Interest has the added bonus of a savings feature where investors can actually earn interest on their funds. Segwit and regular difficulty adjustment should also make it a swift cheap payment network.

Quantum Bitcoin (QBTC)

Fork Date: 28.01.18 – Block TBA

Changes from original protocol: Lightning Network, 8mb block size, Privacy protection, Replay protection, Pow + PoS consensus, Smart Contracts

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1QBTC

Quantum Bitcoin aims to take some of the biggest and best Bitcoin ideas and amalgamate them into a single package. Big blocks, Lightning Network and privacy makes for another speculative project.

Bitcoin LITE (BTCL)

Fork Date: 30.01.18 – Block TBA

Changes from original protocol: Proof of Stake consensus, Privacy options

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BTCL

Bitcoin LITE is nothing special, in fact it is aiming to be to Bitcoin what silver is to gold. Sound familiar? This is more of a Litecoin competitor that is to include a premine. Nothing of note here really.

Bitcoin Ore (BCO)

Fork Date: 31.12.17 – Block 501949

Changes from original protocol: Proof of Capacity consensus, 8mb block size, 5 minute block time, Replay protection

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BCO

Bitcoin Ore uses a new consensus style called Proof of Capacity. It touts the more energy efficient cheaper mining solution as the future of Bitcoin. Steady roll out over 2018 will be interesting to watch.

Bitcoin Private (BTCP)

Fork Date: January 2018 – Block TBA

Changes from original protocol: Private transactions

Distribution method: 1BTC = 1BTCP + 1ZCL = 1BTCP

Bitcoin Private forks both Bitcoin Legacy and Zclassic to create a privacy coin. With more information still to be released we will have to wait and see how this one shapes up.

A Short Guide to Bitcoin Forks

If you have been paying attention to bitcoin at all lately, you may have noticed a lot of talk going on about 'forks'.

Not like the kind you would find on a table, on a blockchain, a fork is a technical event that occurs because diverse participants need to agree on common rules.

At its most basic, a fork is what happens when a blockchain diverges into two potential paths forward — either with regard to a network's transaction history or a new rule in deciding what makes a transaction valid.

As a result, those who use the blockchain have to show support for one choice over the other.

Yet, there are many different types of forks, and the science of studying them is still new. So far, we know some forks resolve on their own, but others, fueled by deep rifts in a community, can cause a network to permanently split, creating two blockchain histories — and two separate currencies.

Along with that, there has also been confusion about the various types of forks, how they get activated and the risks they pose.

To clarify, we've assembled quick rundown on how different forks work.

The basics

Before we get into the classifications, it's worth noting that bitcoin forks already occur quite regularly.

A byproduct of distributed consensus, forks happen anytime two miners find a block at nearly the same time. The ambiguity is resolved when subsequent blocks are added to one, making it the longest chain, while the other block gets "orphaned" (or abandoned) by the network.

But forks also can be willingly introduced to the network. This occurs when developers seek to change the rules the software uses to decide whether a transaction is valid or not.

When a block contains invalid transactions, that block is ignored by the network, and the miner who found that block loses out on a block reward. As such, miners generally want to mine only valid blocks and build on the longest chain.

Following are some of the more common forks and their traits.

What is it? A hard fork is a software upgrade that introduces a new rule to the network that isn't compatible with the older software. You can think of a hard fork as an expansion of the rules. (A new rule that allows block size to be 2MB instead of 1MB would require a hard fork).

What happens? Nodes that continue running the old version of the software will see the new transactions as invalid. So, to switch over to the new chain and to continue to mine valid blocks, all of the nodes in the network need to upgrade to the new rules.

What can go wrong? The problem comes when some sort of political impasse arises, and a portion of the community decides to stick by the old rules no matter what. The hash rate, or network computing power, behind the old chain is irrelevant. What matters is that its data (and ruleset) is still perceived to have value, meaning miners still want to mine a chain and developers still want to support it.

The ethereum DAO hard fork was a perfect case study of how a community can split over rules. Now, we have two blockchains using a variant of the software – ethereum and ethereum classic, both of which boast a different ethos and a different currency.

What is it? A soft fork, by contrast, is any change that's backward compatible. Say, instead of 1MB blocks, a new rule might only allow 500K blocks.

What happens? Non-upgraded nodes will still see the new transactions as valid (500k is less than 1MB in this example). However, if non-upgraded nodes continue to mine blocks, the blocks they mine will be rejected by the upgraded nodes. This is why soft forks need a majority of hash power in the network.

What can go wrong? When a soft fork is supported by only a minority of hash power in the network, it could become the shortest chain and get orphaned by the network. Or, it can act like a hard fork, and one chain can splinter off.

Soft forks have been the most commonly used option to upgrade the bitcoin blockchain so far because it's argued they present a lower risk of splitting the network. Past examples of successful soft forks include software upgrades like BIP 66 (which dealt with signature validation) and P2SH (which altered bitcoin's address formatting).

User-activated soft fork

What is it? A user-activated soft fork (UASF) is a controversial idea that explores how a blockchain might add an upgrade that is not directly supported by those who provide the network's hashing power.

The idea with UASF is that instead of waiting for a threshold of support from mining pools, the power to activate a soft fork goes to the exchanges, wallets and businesses who are running full nodes. (In bitcoin, a full node, even if it is not a mining node, is still responsible for validating blocks.)

What happens? The majority of major exchanges would need to publicly support the change before it could be written into a new version of code. After that, the new software (which has an activation point in the future) gets installed on nodes that want to participate in the soft fork.

What can go wrong? This method requires a much longer lead time to work than a hash-power-triggered soft fork. In fact, it's believed it may take as long as a year or more to write the code and get everyone ready.

Further, if the majority of miners end up not 'falling in line' and activating the new rules, they could use their overwhelming hash power to split the network.

Currently this idea is theoretical and has not been implemented.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

US Search Mobile Web

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The Yahoo product feedback forum now requires a valid Yahoo ID and password to participate.

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Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off

I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount

I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be 'secure' then it'll be 'unfair' gaming and I'll lose because of the insecurity can be a 'Excuse'. Hope y'all understand my explanation!

I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

chithidio@Yahoo.com

i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.

Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?

Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?

Rahyaftco@yahoo.com

RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means

Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

What is a Bitcoin fork?

There has been significant news coverage and developments in recent weeks about changes to digital currency networks. These are sometimes called “forks”. We wanted to provide a simple, non-technical explanation to add context to recent discussions (previous blog posts here and here).

What is a “fork”?

A “fork” is a change to the software of the digital currency that creates two separate versions of the blockchain with a shared history.

Forks can be temporary, lasting for a few minutes, or can be a permanent split in the network creating two separate versions of the blockchain. When this happens, two different digital currencies are also created.

Why are changes made to digital currency protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Coinbase currently supports 3 digital currencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Each of these digital currencies use open-source software protocols with independent development teams responsible for changes and improvements to the network, much in the same way that changes to internet protocols allow web browsing to become better over time.

Our mission is to create an open financial system for the world and we believe digital currencies will be fundamental in achieving this mission. However, many of these digital currencies are still in early development. Making improvements to the software — such as the number of transactions the network can support — is crucial to creating finance 2.0.

Why do forks happen?

There are a few reasons why a fork can happen. For example, when a change is proposed to a digital currency protocol, users need to show their support for the new version and upgrade — in a similar way to people regularly update applications on their computer. In order for these changes to get approved many people need to agree, just as changes to cellphone networks require many phone companies to agree.

What does this mean if I have digital currency stored on Coinbase?

Coinbase actively monitors protocol developments and works hard to ensure customer funds are safe in these events. Our policy is to support only one version of a digital currency. In order to determine which fork to support we look at factors such as size of the network, market value and customer demand. We make this decision carefully because safely supporting a new digital currency requires significant work for many teams.

We will keep users informed about these events through our blog, status page, twitter and supported assets page.