One of the more hilarious myths about bitcoin is that it is a money supply that is fixed. Like most myths, there is an element of truth here. There are only 21 million solutions to the bitcoin encryption puzzle. Each solution represents a coin or token that impacts the bitcoin price. When all the solutions are found there will be no more new bitcoins.

But this is not strictly true, thanks to the open source miracle known as a fork.

Having covered open source for five years in the past decade, I know about forks. A fork happens when developers can’t agree on how to improve an open source program. A divorce is arranged, and the two codebases go their own ways, letting developers sort the wheat from the chaff.

What the Fork Means for Bitcoin’s Price

Bitcoin has already gone through such a fork, resulting in Bitcoin Cash. On Sept. 28 a bitcoin was worth $4,171, and a Bitcoin Cash token was worth $441.72.

I covered the issue for InvestorPlace at the time of the fork and, while some bitcoin trading houses were reluctant at first to hand over Bitcoin Cash to their customers, things are slowly sorting themselves out.

They’re doing so just in time for two more forks.

One, called Bitcoin Gold, claims technical motivation — a new algorithm, the claim of a truly “decentralized” market. But this is basically Chinese miners and a programmer operating under a pseudonym building a new sandbox.

The other fork, based on Segwit2X, aims to increase the transaction capability of bitcoin. It could happen in November.

The result would be four tokens, all claiming the title bitcoin, in the market.

Ethereum Is Bubblelicious

Want more cryptocurrency? You’re in luck, because Vitaly Buterin, the Russian programmer behind Ethereum, is planning a fork there, too.

A new network dubbed Metropolis is being rolled out, aimed like the bitcoin forks on scaling issues, allowing more trading and a new Proof of Stake algorithm to identify new coins.

There is a lot of hype around all of this. Buterin says his network will be able to handle as much transaction volume as Visa, the credit and debit card network, in just a few years.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) CEO James Gorman now calls bitcoin “more than just a fad,” a stark contrast with JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, who calls it a fraud and a bubble.

Argentine bitcoin evangelist Wences Casares, who runs bitcoin wallet company Xapo, which seems to feature his handsome face on its homepage, is now predicting bitcoin prices will breach $1 million per coin in five years. If that prediction doesn’t convince you we are in a bubble, nothing will.

Bottom Line on Bitcoin

Blockchain is a new technology. Blockchain will change the world.

This was true for the Internet in the 1990s, when I made a handsome living as an Internet Commerce analyst. But between the dot-com era and today’s Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) era, a lot happened, and those who got stuck on the wrong side of the trade, in say Pets.Com or Webvan, lost fortunes.

Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, are the dot-com bubble inside the Blockchain reality. You can trade them. It’s exciting. But there is, as yet, no “there” there, because there is no way to be sure that what you have won’t be forked, that your wallet company will support each fork, or that the Chinese and Russian sharks now driving this market from Singapore and Silicon Valley won’t decide to have you for lunch.

Without government, there remains government of the wealthy, government of the most ruthless. Real governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Real governments have laws that can be enforced. Real currencies depend on laws, not men.

It’s like my late father said. If you don’t like cops then the next time you get mugged call a hippie.

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a mystery novella involving Bitcoin, The Reluctant Detective Saves the World,   available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing, he owned shares in AMZN. To follow the value of cryptocurrencies bookmark this.