What is the Fork bitcoin

What is the Fork bitcoin: everything you need to know about the creation of new cryptocurrencies starting from the Bitcoin system.

In January of the 2009 Bitcoin came to life through the release of the first software by Satoshi Nakamoto: few, probably, at the time were able to think that from the dawn of that project a billionaire business would then develop, the outlines of which are still to a large extent today to reveal ...

What is the Fork bitcoin

To be able to understand what is the Fork bitcoin, it may be useful to proceed by step (simplified) and remember that over the years the code Bitcoin (managed by Bitcoin Core, the team that follows the most popular client) has evolved and updated several times, through additions of BIPs (code integration proposals) updated by the managers of the original code.

Well, not all updates are intuitively able to be perceived by the network or to be characterized by particularly incisive impacts. Sometimes these are marginal and negligible additions, so much so that there are no major discussions in the user community.

Other times, on the other hand, the changes are so significant as to require the change of the client: in this case we speak of a fork, or the temporary or permanent creation of a new blockchain, by splitting the initial one into two parts. Therefore, one chain will have the new software: the other will have kept the old.

In turn, the fork can be said to "hard fork"If the new chain rejects the older software's transactions, with the new code that will not be backwards compatible, and"soft fork"If it is backwards compatible and, therefore, can accept transactions with the old software.

When there were

I fork they were much more frequent than one could imagine, although they were not so numerous that they could lose count.

In fact, the first fork is dated 27 December 2014 (Bitcoin XT), at a distance of almost 5 years from the birth of the original code. From that moment on followed other 7 fork, like the one that gave life to Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin Classic (2016), or the most recent Bitcoin Cash, Segwit, Bitcoin Gold, Segwit2x and Protest Fork (2017). To these are then added some fork of doubtful success, like Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Silver, Bitcoin Platinum, and so on.