HardForks As Modern Day Heresies

In real life, that is, the world beyond 0 and 1, when someone has a different point view they create a heresy. In the digital world (and more specifically in the world of cryptocurrencies) this is called a hardfork.

Examining human interaction from the perspective of heresies unravels some interesting things about progress and human nature. The most evident thing is that the heresy that is most widely accepted, becomes the canon aka the genuine version while the lesser accepted views as seen as cults or deviations from the "truth". It doesn't matter which version is less or more true. What matters is what becomes accepted.

In an effort to boycott the other point of view, both religions and cryptocurrencies try to silence the opposition since they understand that this is a game of numbers. In the Ethereum hardfork, we saw the "code is law" group stick to Ethereum Classic while what became more established was Ethereum. In this case the more powerful and leading developers found themselves in the heretic part but they retained the original name and logo while the actual originals became a secondary version (Ethereum Classic).

In the case of the Bitcoin Hardfork, the original Bitcoin accepted some revisions to its code (supposedly) to improve while another heresy (Bitcoin Cash) added different features that make it faster and more efficient. The idea for the first one is for Bitcoin to stay as gold standard and for the other to have world wide adaptation in the form of cash. The politics here are again irrelevant since this is all about personal interest of specific powerful people and not what is best for everyone (hence the heresy). What is important is that there is a fight about which side will prevail. What we see in forums today with banning and silencing is no different that past religious persecution from zealots of different denominations.

Ironic. Blockchain technologies which were all about decentralisation and enabling new degrees of freedom fall into the same pitfalls of human nature. Hardforks and heresies teach us that what remains as true or established has nothing to do with truth. Rather, what prevails in the end, is how the public will be manipulated in order for something to gain acceptance. What we know as sacred and holy from religions is simply a hardfork of few individuals that decided to go their own way for their own personal interests.

Take for example modern day monotheism. The Judaism was a hardfork from the Egyptian priest Moses who didn't like the many Gods of Egypt and decided to create his own religion with a single God. Later on, Christianity hardforked Judaism, presenting Jesus as the son of the Judaic God that came to offer an update. Similarly, Islam hardforked Christianity accepting as Muhammand the true prophet and Jesus as the secondary prophet. Same Blockchain "Yahweh/God/Allah" but with different hardforks along the way.

Financially this teaches us that a coin or for that matter, a heresy, never really goes away or completely dies out. All heresies live in parallel because the original core remains the same and in reality they all support the same idea. On a larger perspective all religions are heresies of the same human blockchain — which is nothing more than the concept of belief to a higher power. This core exists in ourselves due to the way the human brain is structured. In the cryptocurrency world, all coins follow the same Satoshi Nakamoto blueprint of decentralisation and thus they are all related in some way.

Personally, I an avid believer in human nature. As long as we are made of flesh and bones and our endocrinological system produces specific hormones and neurotransmitters, we are bound to follow the exact same patterns and make the same exact moves. As an anthropologist, this helps me to contemplate and understand human behaviour across time and space. As an investor it helps me navigate the markets and make educated decisions. In the end the cryptocurrencies that matter will not be the ones with specific canons whether those are called Ethereum, Bitcoin, Neo or Monero. In the end the cryptocurrencies that will truly matter will be those that connect all others together such as Qtum, Cosmos, Aragon and Bancor. Humans will always hardfork one way or another. The wise move would be to stay above the hard forks and not be part of them.