Re: What happens if BU fails VS What happens if SegWit fails
Indeed. It will be a genuine hard fork / split, which would split off BU into their own altcoin. Something nice I found on reddit:
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People don't seem to understand the fundamentals of crypto !
If you *remove the 21M coin limit* your chain is NOT COMPATIBLE with bitcoin, so of course it will not be bitcoin. You have invalid blocks according to bitcoin's protocol ! You have simply produced an altcoin that is not recognized by the bitcoin protocol.
However, if you DON'T remove the 21M coin limit, and you start with Satoshi's genesis block, and you achieve a higher total PoW in the chain than the "real" bitcoin, then YES, you have taken over bitcoin. That is a (very heavy) version of a successful 51% attack.
Nobody is "trying to harm" anything. Consensus mechanism, nothing else.
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Consider this thought experiment: you create your own altcoin, remove the 21M coin limit and make yourself the central issuer. You are the only user of your coin, but you manage to build/buy enough miners to put in more proof of work into your chain than the total work put into the Bitcoin chain. No one else uses your coin. Is your coin now Bitcoin? You can even use the same genesis block made by Satoshi. I hope this example makes it clear that your coin is not Bitcoin, because everybody else is using the Bitcoin they have always been running, even if is backed my less mining power than your own coin.
Similarly, you somehow attain 51% hashrate and split at one point (changing some rules along the way). Is your coin now Bitcoin? Whoever answers this question with 'yes' should visit a psychiatrist. [/quote]
People don't seem to understand the fundamentals of crypto !
If you *remove the 21M coin limit* your chain is NOT COMPATIBLE with bitcoin, so of course it will not be bitcoin. You have invalid blocks according to bitcoin's protocol ! You have simply produced an altcoin that is not recognized by the bitcoin protocol.
However, if you DON'T remove the 21M coin limit, and you start with Satoshi's genesis block, and you achieve a higher total PoW in the chain than the "real" bitcoin, then YES, you have taken over bitcoin. That is a (very heavy) version of a successful 51% attack.
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Agreed. Well, now we know who is actively trying to harm that.
Nobody is "trying to harm" anything. Consensus mechanism, nothing else.