New Study: Hard Forks Dangerous to Cryptocurrency Stability

Cryptocurrency–Hard forks for top of the market coins have had a quiet 2018 compared to last year. The second half of 2017 saw the creation of Bitcoin Cash, forked from the original BTC code commonly referred to as Core, which has led the currency to a position of fourth by total market capitalization, worth nearly $8 billion. Other derivative currencies such as Bitcoin Gold were spawned off in the interim, failing to achieve the market penetrance of BCH. Segwit2x, a contentious fork to Bitcoin that at one point seemed to split the community in two, was set for a high-profile market position with U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announcing support for the coin. However, just a week before the fork was set to occur, a slew of industry figures and developers came out in support of BTC Core, stating that they would not support the forked coin. In the end the project was largely shelved, but not before creating a massive amount of intrigue for Bitcoin investors and the…