I was not referring to all cryptocurrency chains, I was talking about ETH/ETC split chain.
No one would dispute that altcoins have origins from other coins, but I think it is incorrect to
say that Litecoin and Bitcoin are a split chain, comparable to this Ethereum situation.
Litecoin started their own genesis block and mining, separate from Bitcoin (though the code is a fork).
What I was saying is that it doesn't matter. ETH vs. ETC is the same as BTC vs. LTC (and the same as vs. all the other hundreds of alts). It doesn't matter that the former was split from the same chain and the latter does not. ETH and ETC will compete the same way BTC and LTC do. Well, not exactly the same but close enough.
Altcoins do not normally attack other altcoin chains because most do not take profits from the others,
Of course they do, altcoins compete and if people switch from one alt to another, the market cap of the former will decrease. Exactly the same as people switching from ETH to ETC and reducing its market cap.
Of course, each ETH/ETC chain can take its own path and succeed independently, but that assumes there
are not outside or inside parties who are currently at war, attempting to overtake or destroy the other chain.
Yes, and I am arguing that there is no sensible reason for them to be at war. They should simply compete, and may the best coin win.
Can you provide me any names of two coins that resulted from the same chain, but hardforked
into two, where both coins are profitable and currently still in existence today?
Can you provide me the name of a *significant* coin that underwent a contentious hard fork, that led some users to attempt to stick with a less popular version?
As I said, this has never happened before. ETH/ETC is the first time this has happened. So of course I can't give examples of a successful split, because I can't give examples of a split attempt at all (aside from some irrelevant junk coins). That's one reason I wrote the post, it's a precedent we can try to learn from. One year from now, we will be able to say either "see, ETH/ETC split and they both exist today" or "see, ETH/ETC tried to split and one of them died off".