What happens in the event of a Hard Fork?

There are many rumors and mass speculation about a hard fork coming in Bitcoin. In the event of a hard fork in any cryptocurrency many are speculating what will happen and what does this mean? First lets try and understand what happens on the blockchain. This is basically a network based attack . After the hard fork the ledger is replicated on both sides. If you have a key that controls certain value that key will control that value on both sides. Both sides will now have the Same ancestry. This basically causes you to technically have twice as many coins. The down side is they are worth less than half due to inflation at least initially. So what actually happens to your Bitcoin? The answer it depends on if it is actually your Bitcoin? The best way I can answer this is who controls the keys? If you directly control the keys you are in control. If the coins are on an exchange you are no longer in control not all exchanges will be able to support both sides of the fork. The best solution is to move your Bitcoin to an address that you control before the fork. The next item of speculation is how will this effect my Bitcoins future value? The answer is unknowable but the best course of action is to look at what happened to Ethereum when it forked into Ethereum and Ethereum classic. During a previous hard fork Ethereum split into ETH, the original cryptocurrency that is listed on the exchanges and Ethereum classic ETC. this happened due to actions of an organization known as the DAO.