Im sorry as im sure this is answered but the more I read, the more confused I get with terms about splitting and replay tx's etc.
Can somebody help me understand the specific point of holding 1 btc and then having 1 btc and 1 btc2x after fork?
I understand that if I have 1 btc now and hold private key cold storage and dont transact for a few days around fork time.
But what I dont get is where the 1 btc2x is generated from? Its not a new coin so its not pre-mined, right?
Is it basically down to me choosing to spend either the 1 btc or the 1 btc2x but not having ability to spend both of them? This would seem to explain alot of the holes I think i have in my understanding.
After the fork, dont they have to become two seperate chains moving forward thus becoming a new altcoin? Or am I missing something here that somehow wont turn btc2x and btc into 2 chains with 2 coin types after the fork happens? Miners will be generating rewards on two chains causing generation of new coins on a new chain so i dont see how it would not be an altcoin after the fork occurs.
Is there a huge money risk here for a long-term btc holder that doesnt intend to stop holding? I think the answer is no, not any more than usual volatile/high-risk of cryptocurrency. Am I correct that I dont need to make a decision on my favored fork if Im just a long-term holder? If some of my above understanding is right about the 1:1 coin holding then i think I simply would hold all my btc / btc2x and in 20 years, i could cashout one or the other from my 1 coin example (but not both). Theres no decision timeline I need to worry about, right?
You're asking a lot of questions here... I'll try to answer a couple of them, but i'd suggest you try to read up on the concept of hard forks and soft forks.
Basically, during a hard fork, part of the network starts to use incompatible consensus rules that are enforced starting at a certain block height.
In other words: up untill block x, both sides of the fork have exactly the same data in their public ledger, simply because part of the network chose to follow different rules starting at block x.
This means that, if you have an unspent output that funds an address controlled by your wallet, and the funding transaction is confirmed before block height x, the transaction is included in a block before the hardfork. This means that after block height x (after the hardfork), the unspent output is spendable on BOTH sides of the fork.
In other words: if you have 1 BTC pre-hardfork, you'll have 1 BTC and 1 alt-BTC you can BOTH spend post-fork.
However, if the group of people that caused the hardfork didn't implement replay protection, a transaction spending a pre-fork unspent output on one chain, can be replayed on the forked chain... There are ways around this problem, but that's a completely different question.