[Lazare]

> That sounds like in the world of stocks, a competitor could come along and decide to split the stocks of MY company from the outside, driving down the price of my stocks (me as the company's owner or investor) and there's nothing I can do about it.

It's more like someone saying to all the shareholders of Apple "hey, you like companies that make mobile phones, and I've started a great mobile phone company, and I think it'd be great if you were a shareholder in my company too, so I've sent you some shares in my company too, I hope you like them!"

Is that a thing you could do? Yes.

Does it benefit you in any way? Probably not. There's certainly no reason to think it increases the value of your company.

Does it hurt Apple in any way? Almost certainly not. I mean, if everyone decided your startup was much cooler than Apple, then it might, but it's hard to see how you mailing strangers shares would bring that about.

A bitcoin fork is, in some ways, a little bit like a stock split or a dividend, but it's a lot more like someone randomly mailing strangers scraps of paper which are almost certainly worthless.