Quote from: Spaceman_Spiff on March 18, 2015, 04:37:38 PM

There is nothing to demonstrate. If I understand correctly, he is just saying anybody can create an altcoin in which the initial ledger of ownership is taken over from bitcoin.

Exactly

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Of course, hardly anybody would see this as "being able to duplicate bitcoins".

The bitcoins are effectively duplicated because they can be manipulated independently in the two blockchains.

This is just a particular instance of the observation that, while there is a finite supply of "the" bitcoins, there is no limit for the number of cryptocoins. Random altcoins are often dismissed because they lack bitcoin's history; but a bitcoin clone created by such a hard fork would share bitcoins history up to the "schism". Which branch would be the "legitimate" bitcoin is not a technical question, just a political and marketing one.

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Of course this is not a technical issue. o it sounds a bit like saying "passwords you can use on 1 website can be used on another website, therefore internet security is flawed".

The possibility of a hard-fork clone does not expose any security risk, it is directed against the "scarcity" claim.