jonald_fyookball,


I don't know how you can go and call me "misinformed" when you fail to read my post.  bitcoincore.org is not divine truth.  I came up with a solution that they didn't consider.

Sorry for my frustration with you.  Have a nice day.

cryptoanarchist,

Each Bitcoin Node has a Policy chosen by its operator.  Anybody can produce block candidates that conform to a node's policy.  A node will look for the chain of blocks with the greatest PoW THAT MEETS ITS POLICY.  Differences in node policy can result in chain splits.  There is nothing stopping long lasting chain splits, where each is its own separate money supply/ledger.

In fact, alt coins can be considered Bitcoin nodes that adopted a different Policy, who forked at or before the Bitcoin genesis block.

Miners are motivated to increase their mining work on a coin until the following equation equalizes:

Energy Cost + Capital Rent + Labor ~= block bonus + transaction fees

So as long as a branch's coins are worth something to somebody... they will be mined.

Cheers,
Praxeology Guy