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I have some bitcoin in wallets and online accounts in multiple places. What will happen to this bitcoin if both Core and XT remain indefinitely? Will I own twice as much bitcoin, just in two different currencies?

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Ultimately I believe the chain with most work should be the valid one, suppressing all other chains. In fact if you use an SPV client, such as MultiBit, you don't even check the size of the block, because you only use the headers. So if that's the rule, your money will only ever be in one chain: the one where most computing power was used to generate it.

PoW is entirely democratic: people vote with their computing power and if more people decide they want different protocol rules, so be it. In fact I would go even further and say that this is much more democratic than a bunch of developers deciding what the Bitcoin protocol should be.

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    The "most work" rule only applies if the client accepts that both chains are otherwise valid. In the event of a hard fork, one client might adopt protocol rules under which the other's chain is not valid, and so won't be considered, even if it has more work.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Aug 19, 2015 at 18:45
  • Since the "<8mb" rule is a superset of "<=1mb" rule, is XT's block compatible with both new&old consensus rule? However, the Core's block is compatible with old consensus rule only.
    – moshaholo
    Aug 19, 2015 at 19:46
  • @NateEldredge yes but then it becomes debatable whether the client that accepts the chain with "less work" can actually be considered valid, because after all the majority voted (with their computing power) to use the other chain.
    – Luca Matteis
    Aug 19, 2015 at 21:39

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