[dx034]

It's not really a stock split (where you get multiple shares for the same company) but a company split. If a company splits itself into two parts (e.g. Amazon to be split into retail and AWS) they can distribute shares of both new companies to the shareholders of the old company. In that situation you have the same problem. If the new AWS shares are not traded and you were short Amazon, you would have to cover AWS shares and therefore buy them.

In reality it's not an issue with large companies because it happens rarely and there are so many shareholders that a market would appear quickly.

[clarky07]

It's not that either though. if AWS left amazon that would be value leaving amazon stock and going to the new aws stock. in this case there is no value leaving bitcoin. bitcoin is still the same. someone just decided to start a new coin, and instead of starting from scratch, they are copying the bitcoin blockchain up to this point and giving everyone who has a coin now a new coin that has no real value to speak of yet. it doesn't do anything, isn't accepted anywhere, and currently functions worse in every way (these could all change in time, but for now they are true)

Anyone, anywhere, anytime can fork bitcoin and give away new worthless coins. Forcing shorts to go an buy all the worthless coins is simply unreasonable.

[smogcutter]

Fair, and Levine points this out in the article. He also observes that part of what makes bitcoin tricky and non intuitive is that if it worked like a company spinoff, not much new value should be created. Post split the price of BTC plus BCC should more or less equal the old BTC price, but that hasn't happened, because these are tulip bulbs.