This is our second in a series of syndicated Huffington Post articles taking BitShares and the Hero to the mainstream.

In a previous Huffington Post article about the ongoing Bitcoin Civil War, we begged industry insiders not to split Bitcoin into multiple coins and ruin its unique status as The Gold Standard. We pointed out that it doesn’t need to upgrade, it just needs to cooperate with other supporting chains that can already do what classic Bitcoin will never be able to do – scale to meet global transaction speeds and bandwidth.

Alas, nobody listened. We may have dodged a bullet on August 1st, we’ll see, but this worry won’t go away. Another Time of Forking now looms in November and eventually we won’t be able to stop it. The system will grind to a halt and Bitcoin will break up in a forking crisis.

So we decided the next best thing is to fix it ourselves first,

once and for all.

We are adding our own candidate to join the other “Alt-Bitcoins” in the ongoing forking Diaspora. We call it Bitcoin United (BTC-U) aka (BTC.BTS). The purpose of Bitcoin United to provide a solution so far advanced that there would be no reason to adopt anything else – thus avoiding a permanent breakup. Bitcoin will remain united through the sheer force of excellence of our long-proven, freely available technology.

A gift to the industry.

BTC-U will be gifted one-for-one to all holders of BTC at the last unforked “classic” block when the Time of Forking inevitably arrives (we won’t fork it over until somebody else breaks the taboo – then it will happen automagically). When that final fork up occurs, Bitcoin United will come to the rescue – providing a solution so much better than what we’ve been offered by the insiders and other special interests that there will remain only one true Bitcoin.

After all, if we’re going to break Bitcoin unity

for some tiny, ineffective code changes anyway,

why not go all the way and fix everything at once?

Bitcoin United upgrades Bitcoin to the state of the art in blockchain technology, permanently solving more than just its intractable lack of scalability, but all twelve of Bitcoin’s most serious limitations. (More about that in a future article.)

And Bitcoin United gets an automatic free upgrade to EOS.io technology with unlimited bandwidth later that same year. But for now, we’ll settle for having all transactions under three seconds and scalability beyond 10,000 transactions per second – enough to skip Bitcoin’s next ten regularly-scheduled forking dramas.

The Great Bitcoin Dodecathon

Let’s look at how the “Alt-BTC” Olympians stack up against each other in the current Bitcoin Dodecathon. (Much nicer sounding than “Bitcoin Civil War,” don’t you think?) Here's a few of the twelve main events.

Transaction Bandwidth. BTC classic has just 7 transactions per second for the whole world to share. The other alts seek to double this once or maybe twice. Bitcoin United can cruise beyond 10,000 transactions per second without breaking a sweat. It frequently breaks its own record for transactions per day - beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum records combined.

Transaction Time. BTC classic can take an hour (or days) to complete one transaction unless you pay the premium Bitcoin must use to ration its bandwidth. Bitcoin United takes three seconds…tops. The other alt-BTCs merely stretch the rationing a bit.

Inflation Rate. Bitcoin United ends inflation the day it takes over. It uses DPOS technology instead of POW so there is no need to pay miners and no need to add to the supply. All other solutions keep POW to serve the needs of Big Mining, not the public. Who’s diluting what’s in your wallet?

Operating Cost. Bitcoin United has no operating costs, sipping green energy while the others guzzle hundreds of millions of dollars worth of coal-generated electricity annually.

Counterparty Risk. The only way to trade the other candidates is to risk them on a corruptible off-chain exchange. Bitcoin United unites Bitcoin holders with hundreds of other assets on the same blockchain where they can trade at the speed of light without counterparty risk. How many more hacked exchanges will it take before this sinks in?

How it Works

By now the expert reader has had enough clues to recognize that there is only one real-time industrial grade blockchain technology that can deliver this mix of performance and features. That’s right. Bitcoin United (BTC-U) aka (BTC.BTS) will be hosted on the BitShares platform as an olive branch to the Bitcoin community. After all, we’ve benefited from the ecosystem that Bitcoin built and it’s time to give back.

On the day the fork occurs, BitShares will grab a “snapshot” of the state of the Bitcoin blockchain. Shortly thereafter, BitShares will distribute matching BTC.BTS to every BTC owner on the BitShares blockchain. All you’ll need to do is import your bitcoin keys into the BitShares wallet and claim them!

Boom! Instant upgrade to light speed. From that point on, we’ll let the market set the price for slow vs. fast bitcoins. But at least everyone will have a choice!

What Makes Us Believe that Bitcoin United will be Adopted?

Well, the vested interests in old code and old hardware will never accept their own obsolescence, so we aren’t worried about that. But our Billion Hero Campaign is giving away a billion dollars worth of BitShares to mainstream user causes in the coming year – just to draw attention to Bitcoin United and our new HERO – a stabilized smartcoin that is programmed by smart contract to grow at 5% annually against the dollar.

Imagine trading your new BTC.BTS against HEROs in real time

on the same counterparty-free blockchain.

Then begins the rapid game of attrition. After the world gets used to green energy, low-cost three-second transactions and stably appreciating smartcoins trading on a single blockchain with robotically honest built-in exchanges, it will become increasingly clear that Bitcoin United has saved the industry from a forking disaster.

Thanks to our Billion Hero Campaign, the first things most new mainstream users will learn about in the coming year is Bitcoin, BitShares and the Hero. It will be our lightspeed bitcoins that they first experience.

Just sayin’...

SPECIAL THANKS @cm-steem for posting this Trial Balloon yesterday!

Stan Larimer, President

Cryptonomex

The Godfather of BitShares and the HERO

Image credits: see embedded links

About the Author -- Stan Larimer

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Greatest Hits

Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics

Engineering Trust with Charles Hoskinson

The Origin of BitShares

The Hero from BitShares Island

Key Links

Here are some of the best links for inquiring about us:

The Original HERO Definition Post - “The Hero from BitShares Island"

https://steemit.com/bitshares/@stan/the-hero-from-bitshares-island-5

The Billion Hero Challenge Announcement

https://steemit.com/hero/@stan/the-billion-hero-challenge

The Avant Garde Magazine Special Issue

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1313226

The Video

By far the best resource for new people is our “TED Talk” in front of a live studio audience in Hollywood. Everyone loves it for some reason. There is no better way to know all about us in one sitting.