Introduction
Hello, my name is HBHades and I have been following Ethereum since the whitepaper was released back in 2014. I have since invested in the presale in small amounts ($30 for 100 eth at the time). I have also mined the currency myself on day one and immortalized my string on one of the first 1000 blocks.
I've seen many recent comments that make me feel like part of the Ethereum community is fearful of the current hardfork and I would like to at least calm some of the concerns. Here are some of the current comments that have been going around in the community.
Hardfork refund will cause a crash due to overwhelming supply
Currently you can purchase DAO tokens at almost exactly the same price that day one investors paid (.0995 USD per token). This means that the hard fork is assumed to pass.
With an assumption of the Hardfork passing many users have become afraid that this will mean that many of the Eth that were locked in the DAO will suddenly become available to trade and will hit the market. The fear includes the thought that this would cuase a crash.
If this were true, why would investors not just sell their dao tokens now and make back most of their DAO investment with no risk of a crash?
Ethereum is done, this fiasco has killed Eth for good
This comment is mostly attributed to trolling, but I will take a look at it just the same.
Ethereum hit an all time high of about $15.20 on Sunday, March 13th. This was well before "The DAO" crowdfunding had even started. I can understand that when Eth hit $21 last month that it must have been (at least) in part to "The DAO" hype. But, in the end, Ethereum was already on an upward trend and will likely continue to do so in the future with new projects constantly being developed and an active community.
To assume that one issue that is being calmly and intelligently resolved as we speak could permanently kill a crypto-currency is rather unlikely.
Hardforks are Evil!
Ethereum, much like other cryptocurrencies (read: Bitcoin) has gone through multiple hardforks already. In order to fix a bug that allowed a malicious user to generate over 1 billion bitcoin, the bitcoin community hardforked. Ethereum initiated the release of "Homestead" via a hardfork. We have done this before and will do it again from time to time.
Hardforks are a part of the code and how it allows the community to decide on changes to that code. It still requires that a large majority of the community to adopt the fork.
This Hardfork sets a precedence much like "Too Big To Fail" and I refuse to support it
I've heard this one quite a few times and I think the comparison between what happened with "The DAO" and US government bailouts is unfair. The US government allowed companies to take increasingly risky investments because they had no fear of not being bailed out. The DAO had no idea that they would become as large as they would have, that a hacker would exploit their contract and start this fiasco, or that the community would come together to support a refund of all DAO tokens.
If a bank were to have an unintended exploit in their software that was exploited by a hacker; would the bank just let the thief take the money and run with no recourse?