Looking ahead, Bitcoin may be due for another one. Come October 25th we may see another hard fork of the Bitcoin code to create Bitcoin Gold (BTG). This new faction basically wants to change the way Bitcoin can be mined, from a predominantly ASIC format over to GPU's instead, in an attempt to keep the control with the masses and not a few massive mining operations. This latest hard fork is a bit mysterious and the information about it is scarce and confusing (here is their website). Will you get free Bitcoin gold if you are holding Bitcoin in a supported location? If they pull it off, yes... but this is a great example of what happens when people stop agreeing on a mutual direction for a project.

What happens when the community all support a change to the code of a cryptocurrency? You get a hard fork that doesn't result in a new currency.