Something I think is very cool about bitcoin is that fact that you can compare it directly to physical currency in a way that makes it easy to understand at a h

Something I think is very cool about bitcoin is that fact that you can compare it directly to physical currency in a way that makes it easy to understand at a high level. The block chain is essentially the same as a physical ledger that everyone (collectively) uses to confirm and record all transactions. If everyone suddenly split (partitioned) in to 2 separate groups with 2 separate ledgers each 'everyone' (now that there are 2) would continue to use the ledger of their group. I'm not sure if bitcoin makes any arrangements for 'merging' ledgers. My understanding is that among divergent chains the longest chain always 'wins' and any others are considered fraudulent. So, once the two partitions are re-combined, when individuals reach out to 'everyone' and say "give me the latest version of the ledger" they would find the 2 competing ledgers and should choose to trust the one that is longer.