This is maybe a stupid question - but this more recent fork seems like it came up out of nowhere pretty suddenly, and I follow the crypto news decently closely. From a technical standpoint, is it possible to make a fork happen pretty much at any point?
The gold fork was actually trying to beat out the second larger fork. It's been disclosed on various sites and videos confirming why it suddenly appeared. as compared with the other more serious fork afterwards. Frankly we really should be pushing people to stay put for a while because more and more folks are adopting bitcoin these days.