Excellent explanation azguard! Thank you!
With the fork creating a new bitcoin in Bitcoin Gold, it doesnt actually do anything to BTC. My question is thus - can BTC be improved without a fork? Will it ever be able to increase processing bandwidth or transaction size without completely changing the code and creating a new coin, is this what SegWit2x is supposed to do? Or is BTC maxed out now in regards to speed and transaction size?
From my understanding, you can make changes to the code of bitcoin and improve various aspects of it
without a hard-fork. If there is consensus by everyone, then there is no split. The split happens because people literally switch over to the other version of the code. Imagine every machine running one code and then, on the hard-fork, a number of machines start running the new code --> This is the split at the fundamental level.
The new code needs a whole new infrastructure (wallets, etc.) and will be "competing" with the legacy code for users, miners, etc. If users don't migrate, then miners won't have much reward as there will not be any serious bid on the price either. This will be a self-reinforcing cycle to make the chain irrelevant, as is becoming the case with Bitcoin Cash.
The real issue is when people want to assign the name Bitcoin and the symbol BTC to the new code. That can become very problematic, as people will be confused as to which one is which and that can lead to some serious disruption. Some companies seem to want to do that on this fork and, if they do and the fork gains momentum, then we will have potentially more serious issues to deal with than network speed and high fees.
These are my observations so far, let's hope for the best!