The purpose of representation is to facilitate change.

It seems that a super majority of the miners working with a bunch of key exchanges and merchant payers to achieve a consensus (New York Agreement) on segwit2x is a form of representation.  The developers strongly opposing this direction is another form of representation.  I suspect the first form will end up carrying more weight but that is just my supposition. 

It does show whats going on in Bitcoin representation at this time though.

No, it would break the consensus rules, the founding principle and the community consensus.

Anddddd

It's totally unneccesary since a bitcoin is divisible by 100,000,000.  So if we get more people we can easily support selling them some and everybody has plenty of "satoshis" to spend. (A satoshi is 100,000,000th of a bitcoin). This way existing holders don't have to worry about inflationary coin generation making their coins worthless. It is ONE of bitcoins best feature.

Short answer: there is no proof either way.  

However, I don't think we are in a bubble. I think people are slowly clueing in to having a small part of their investment portfolio in bitcoin instead of or in addition to gold.  Bitcoin has limited coins like gold has limited mined weight. Bitcoin is drastically easier to transport and conceal then gold is. There is $8 trillion in gold holdings. Only $70 billion in bitcoin. As people figure this out in an exponential process (like flu spreading only slower) the relative market caps will close and bitcoin will be worth 100s of times what it is today. Hodl.

If you have serious money in bitcoin

1. Buy a hardware wallet.
2. Load it up with your coins
3. Buy a second hardware wallet
4. Initialize the second hardware wallet with the 12 word wallet recovery phrase from the first
5. Put them in separate safe deposits with the 12 word lists.
6. Don't keep any additional copy of the 12 list and don't memorize it.
7. Use a mobile wallet with different private keys if you need small change.'

This way its harder for the robber to use a $12 wrench as a cryptanalyst tool.

*you really only need one wallet+list in one box and list in the other but if you have enough coin to worry about this then why not have 2 wallets

doesn't take much to get a programmer-peer to get into Bitcoin.  Just tell him/her your personal experience.  That usually gets it done.

as far as the op's theory: yes the more news of any kind the more people will adopt bitcoin

some of this is because a non-trivial amount of people hold a fair amount of gold.

and gold stinks compared to bitcoin.  portability, security,  etc

I can put my hardware wallet in my go bag in case I ever have to get out of dodge

Dunno, because I never had a bincointalk account before yesterday? How else would I (or anyone else in that position that you could also be referring to) post here.

Don't want to violate my handle's guidance by cycling more on the obvious importance of mass market exchanges like Coinbase. In fact numerous other posters have made that crystal clear.

Best of luck with your proofs by assertion.

well I give you credit for the "the cryptocurrency formerly known as Bitcoin"  CFKB,  kind of catchy.

I have no connections with btc1 developers, don't know them, never spoke or emailed to any of them.  Just what I can read in publicly available places.
Bad Motive/Character insinuations are all to frequent on the net and don't help.

As for me personally, I am not assured of jackshit.  I am trying to game out what the most likely outcome of relative chain usage.  I have a personal interest because I like Bitcoin and I have a bunch of them in my hardware wallet.  At the same time I've recently done a bunch of reading on Merkle trees, Merkle proofs, and even the first paper on public key cryptography in the literature by ... Ralph Merkle.

Its just a hobby -  lighten the f up.

Assuming miner/exchange cohesion continues:

What do you think the Bitcoin as original Bitcoin use case(s) in 2018 is going to be. Do you think that there will be exchanges say in the US for that?
Peer-to-peer?
merchant agreements?

And how long is it going to take to get the new POW hash implemented to protect this coin from mischief? or is that not necessary?
And without the POW hardfork how is difficulty going to adjust in any rational time with the loss of the >90 percent of the miner hashpower?

Thanks for your comment.  This issue of relative chain support is exactly what I am trying to understand. I am having some difficulty seeing how the original chain keeps on trucking. But I certainly don't have a comprehensive understanding of the existing food chain.

I have been trying to clearly outline my assumptions so that they can be challenged.
For instance

Comments assume the miner/exchange cohesion continues.  (still applies)

Other Assumptions:

that the supporting exchanges will follow their stated position to follow the majority hash power.
defining a new core hash for POW, testing of it, deploying it and achieving significant usage will take finite, non-trivial, time.
a large fraction of bitcoin users are not super-knowledgeable about crypto currency algorithms
a large fraction of users get their bitcoins from majority hash following exchanges and not peer-to-peer at least for the next year.
a large fraction of users who spend their bitcoins with merchants do so by way of merchant support from companies like Bitpay.

I am willing to update/revise my assumptions based on discussion if appropriate.  I sure don't think I have all/most/many of the answers. On the other hand I don't think my assumptions are far off.  The most interesting one, in my opinion, is miner cohesion but I don't speak Chinese so I can't help there.

Coinbase, Bitpay, Gemini, and quite a large number of heavy hitters are spelled out in the New York Agreement.

relative to "who's calling what an alt coin"  It aint me babe.  Its (assuming miner/exchange cohesion continues) Coinbase, Gemini, Bitpay  and on and on that have tons of real customers who will be calling Bitcoin-from-segwit2x Bitcoin/BTC and to use their services a Core supported coin won't be that.  It will be like eth or ripple or bitcoin cash - AN ALTCOIN.

One actually needs some assumptions defined if you want to attempt to reasonably model the future progress of something

once again comments assume miner/exchange cohesion continues

"but who cares about the name"  

I am currently "modeling" the Bitcoin world as a giant mass of relatively algorithm-unknowledgeable folks that are excited by the legacy winning cryptocurrency that they know as Bitcoin and a much much smaller group of people that know the difference between a Merkle tree root and that damn thing in their back yard.  The name like any brand, conveys longevity, success, good word of mouth, lower risk.  People that aren't super knowledgeable care about brand names because they are aware of their lack of knowledge.  Even knowledgeable people can sometimes care because they know of the force this has on mass quantities of other folks.

Alt-Core-Bitcoin is going to need a carefully selected and tested new hash algorithm for its proof of work, a new name,  a lot of organic uptake, and a successful effort to get back on the exchanges (or cool effective new alternative for exchanges) and new merchant arrangements as well.  This is not a trivially easy slog. It won't be quick. Don't forget that

Comments are based on the assumption that current miners hold their signaled position.

Agree that hashpower  in terms of hashes per second can be much less, on a new hash algorithm, if there are no current asics available, and still be strongly credible.

However,

People are going to have to have the new Core selected hash scheme for POW quickly or the Core-ALT-Bitcoin will take quite a  while to get going.  If Core selects a new POW Hash scheme with the due diligence that it normally follows that would seem to take a fair amount of effort, test deployment, yada yada.   When are you thinking this is going to happen?  

I see the current Bitcoin wonderful success as a very large ocean liner, used by a lot of people.  Useage patters like oceanliners turn slowly.  So while there may indeed be longterm ways around the existing exchanges (and damn I hope their are),  I don't see that as having much effect in 2018 while Bitcoin-from-segwit2x rocks on and Core-ALT-Bitcoin is a low volume altcoin trying to get listed.

I agree that you have a plausibly reasoned theoretical argument on how bitcoin should work but, in the unstructured commercial world, enforcement is an important issue as well. And the key enforcement  in Bitcoin is majority hash power.  Hence we seem to be increasingly likely to see Core Development running a low hash power alt coin or Core Development "walking away"  It seems that Miners (in league with declared hashfollowing exchanges) can indeed dictate what chain is Bitcoin and identified as BTC on the exchanges.  If the miners hang together when i say "Hey Google - what is the price of Bitcoin" I'm going to hear what the price of Bitcoin-from-segwit2x is at that moment, regardless of the intelligence, blood, sweat and tears that Core has put into Bitcoin.

"If people don't start switching to that software"  - Tons of people buy bitcoin from Coinbase and Gemini leaving them on the exchange or using SPV wallets - the first is an NYA signatory the second is a stated majority hash power follower.  Tons of people pay bitcoin to commercial vendors using Bitpay another NYA signatory.  I'm not seeing a problem for Bitcoin-from-segwit2x here.

Thanks for the link. Watched the video.  I had read many of the highlights in the various bitcoin blogs but it was best to see it straight.

So if the x2hf succeeds then based on user demand for the solution from core either:

1.) POW hard fork - which would seem to me to result in a low hash power altcoin since BTC will be already in play at Coinbase, Gemini, Bitpay... based on their public statements of following the majority hash power or being actual NYA signatories.

or.

2) Core team walks away.

As far as 1.) I am trying to game out the world where this happens and I see a low hashpower altcoin as being a pretty anemic vehicle for the Core Team.  But perhaps they indeed could add some attractive new features that users would like and try to slowly build support and turn it into a real player.  The timing is going to be the tough thing here as it seems to take quite a while for a community to change based on features and the BTC-from-segwit2x coin would likely attract some level of qualified development to at least copy good open-source ideas and tack in alt/core's wind to forestall some of their momentum.

Another position from his talk that I take to heart is that the further you are from bitcoin core the more plausible bad ideas seem.  I have led software developments (not cryptocurrency) and I know full well that this is generally true.  I also know that it can not be effectively used as an overarching lever to convince a business  community or business leaders that their views must be subordinated. (when perhaps sometimes they should).

Thanks I read Andrew Chow's issues which I have also seen discussed elsewhere.
I've spent time reading the issue discussions in the btc1 repository. The sense that I get from that is that issues like quadratic sighashing due to huge transactions have a responsible plan. Something about limiting to a single one mb or 100k transaction per block if I remember correctly These things are not being ignored.  I understand that the process there is not large committee/ in all due time. But this does not mean proceeding without apparently reasonable planning either

I don't particularly want to lose core any more than you. But I don't won't to lose the miners and the exchanges right now as well. It's crazy sad that core and the miners+exchanges couldn't meet somewhere acceptable to both.  But that is way above my pay grade. All I can do now is try to figure out what happens if the miners hang tough and it's a little scary but from what I can read I'm not pulling my bitcoins because I actually think the 2xhf will work and I don't actually hear core members categorically saying otherwise. More expressing lower level concerns that are seemingly well covered in the btc1 repository discussions. Obviously they strongly despise the process.

Turned down a pull request  by Garzik to upload the btc1 2xhf into core in fact.
There's no doubt about standing on firmly held principle in the face of losing control of the boat.

You miss my point if you think I prefer losing Core and getting Garzik. That is not what I get to chose anyway.  That seems like it's up to the miners and the exchanges. My question is why do you predict operational or technical failure after 2xhf if the miners hang together?  Especially short term. Longer term I would well imagine that Garzik might well attract some decent talent on a project as visible and crucial as this. He may not have been a big commiter for the last couple years but I am just not seeing a dope.

As has been pointed out by others the majority hash power has what it has. I am trying to understand what happens after 2xhf and if you have tangible reasons why it's going to operationally or technically fail then please share.

Same deal for my 4 bitcoin withdrawals from Gemini.
A small fee apparently covered by Gemini and I got the full requested bitcoin in my hardware wallet.
I vaguely recall reading somewhere in their terms that you get x no fee withdrawals like this but could be mistaken.

First I don't hope any president fails even if I don't like him because of the general grief it will cause.
I fear a failure after a 2x fork is similar. Bitcoin could take a huge hit and how could I wish for that.

Second - Why do you think there is a high risk of failure on operational or technical grounds. Jeff Garzik is clearly not doing what a lot of people here want, but he is former core and is by no means a wild and crazy guy. 

People who own Bitcoin bailing - indeed, but partially or more counterbalanced by new people that are finally cluing into wonderment of cryptocurrency and don't want to invest their money into coins controlled by a 23 year old with a parade of big banks behind him.  

And I have an inkling that if MAHF happens and things stabilize, that additional developers will want to be a part of such an amazing currency, even if some of the best in the world pass.

Of course Core could hard fork a POW change and get an alt coin registered with Coinbase, Gemini, Bitpay etc. possibly.  It might take a little while and I don't know if they really have the heart for a move like that or if it is just a passing thought.