So you call yourself a "Free Market Capitalist" but you are afraid of a free market? Wow, I'm impressed.
FYI, hard forks have occurred in the past.
FYI, the only way both forks would continue on is if a subset of miners kept mining each fork.
FYI, if that happened (it wouldn't), you would still control the same amount of "money" with the same private keys, it would just be divided across two chains.
That is what I was thinking would happen. If the chains would split, you would generally have the one half of the original amount on each of the two halves which would equal what you originally started out with.
Minus the shock from the panic.
Just like with stock splits, there almost always goes down some.
Most people on bitcoinocracy have voted that they will sell their coins in hardfork, which means that we could see big drop in price.
I agree there will be selling, but there will also be buying. This will make for a strong return. It is kind of like hitting a pothole. The price will go down and then when everyone realizes that the whole panic i was for no reason, they will get back in. I will be buying and selling the day this happens.
Except if both chains continue, then it will be fucked, merchants will have to double their expenses and everything will go up in price.
So maybe the inflation aspect would really halve bitcoin's value.
Imagine if you have 1000 $ of
BTC loaned out, and then you get only 500 $ of
BTC back. How would that make you feel?