RE: Can bitcoin lose its value from the fork?

I sold all my bitcoin for alts (mainly bts) several years ago. Since then, I only buy bitcoin, and just enough, when I need it to complete a certain transaction that is most easily done using bitcoin.

I never use centralized exchanges any more for moving between bitcoin and alts, having learned some bitter lessons :-)

I would rather pay the extra spread to use blocktrades.com or shapeshift.io or changelly.com when I need to move from or to bitcoin and alts.

I sometimes need to use fiat to buy bitcoin (often just to increase my alt holdings, but need BTC to do that). At such times I do need to use a centralized exchange - but I make sure to leave both my fiat and the then purchased BTC on that exchange for the absolutely minimum time necessary. This sometimes means paying more for the bitcoin purchased than if I tried to buy it slowly over days or weeks, but the risk mitigation is worth it to me to be able to get my fiat and bitcoins off of the exchange and back under my own control as quickly as possible.

All that being said, I will not be holding much BTC at the time of the forks, but I will certainly try to pick up some cheap BTC-U after the fork if available and the price seems right :-)

p.s. The longer you have funds on a centralized exchange, the greater your chance of losing them (please research the number of exchanges that have gone under, taking depositors' money with them)