[AUDIENCE] As bitcoin becomes more popular, more people are using it.
We are already getting the problem with blockchain [congestion].
[ANDREAS] Yes. [AUDIENCE] There's been the talk of doing a fork.
[ANDREAS] Yes.
[AUDIENCE] If Bitcoin goes down the path of actually doing a fork, how will they roll that out?
Will it be something that will happen overnight, or over twelve months?
If you own quite a lot of bitcoin, how long would you have before you [need] to change over to the new coins?
[ANDREAS] Alright. How many of you have heard of this concept of forks?
[Audience raises hands] Great, quite a few. And how many of you are worried?
A few, okay. Good, [there is] generally not too much fear and uncertainty in that particular area.
I just released a video on YouTube last week called "Forkology: A Study of Forks For Newbies."
It's an entire [video] describing what a fork is, how it works, why it happens, and what you do with it.
But the bottom line is this: if any cryptocurrency forks, what happens is that the end of the blockchain forks.
Imagine my arm is the blockchain, my elbow is the genesis block, and [the blocks build up my arm].
Then it bifurcates at the top [with my fingers].
If you have money here, [at my arm], that is common history for both sides.
Both sides recognize you had money in the past, meaning you [will still] have money [at my fingers].
I'll use another little analogy. Jean-Luc Picard gets on to the transporter station with five coins in his pocket.
As usual, a transporter malfunction occurs.
Down on the planet, Jean-Luc Picard materializes. But on the Enterprise, Jean-Luc doesn't dematerialize.
Uh-oh, we have two Jean-Luc Picards, both of whom claim to be the original. [Laughter]
One of them wants to call the other Jean-Luc Classic. [Laughter]
There's a lot of disagreement. They file claims in the Patent & Trademark Office...
because they both claim to be Jean-Luc Picard, the original.
But here's the interesting thing. How many coins do they have in their pocket? They both have five coins.
It may be that those coins have different value on the surface versus on the ship, but they both have five coins.
If one of them spends those coins, then the other one still has their coins.
They have now two different futures, even though they shared a common past.
One of them can go broke by spending all their coins; the other one still has five coins and nothing changed.
What happens on one side doesn't affect the other.
There will be some disagreement if they fix the malfunction in the transporter...
and merge the two Jean-Luc Picards.
The one on the ship, who didn't spend any of his coins, will be rather annoyed at the other one
who spent all of his coins and gained a few pounds because he was [buying] cake with them. [Laughter]
So if they merge back, you [can] have some nasty problems with the uniform not fitting.
The bottom line is: if you have coins before [the fork], you have coins after [the fork] on both [chains].
The shared common history is one.
You don't have to do anything.
What you have to be very careful with, is that your clone doesn't open any new debt
or create any situations that might affect your future [if they merge back].
If you have money on both [forks of the chain] and you try to move money from one of the forks,
there is a risk called a replay attack, where a transaction you intended to make on only one of the forks...
is identical [in structure] to a transaction that could be done on the other [chain fork],
and someone copies it over [to that ledger] so your money gets spent on both forks.
That is called a replay. It's not double-spending because it only got spent once on each fork.