Hard Forks on the Bitcoin Blockchain: Reversible Exit, Continuing Voice

Abstract

Hirschman’s Exit/Voice conception has stimulated an extensive literature across many disciplines. Exit/Voice was designed to shine explanatory light on the responses of stakeholders in firms and states in moments of decline. We apply it here to the Bitcoin blockchain, where the Exit/Voice apparatus illuminates strange and unencountered qualities of the reactive choices open to the blockchain’s varied stakeholders.