Showing posts with label hard fork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hard fork. Show all posts

Bitcoin SegWit2x fork has been CANCELED - here's why...


The Bitcoin SegWit2x fork was just a week away, but behind the scene things were going very very wrong.

In an e-mail sent today, the SegWit2x developers stated:

"Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin's growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade."

But for those who have been following along, it was a long road leading to this point.

Infact, developers supporting the fork have been dropping off for months.  Industry leaders even formed an alliance on twitter adding "NOX2" next to their names to show their disapproval.

With fears of the Bitcoin community being split put to rest, prices shot up today setting a new all time high of $7,888.

But it may not be over with yet, and Segwit2x could still resurface, and still has a chance to succeed.

There are legitimate reasons for a larger blocksize to increase Bitcoin's transaction capacity. But with no replay protection (which would cause people to accidentally send double payments with every transaction, sending both bitcoin and the new Bitcoin SegWit2x at once) now just didn't seem to be the right time. 

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Author: Oliver Redding
Seattle News Desk

Coinbase/GDAX issue statement regarding the Bitcoin Segwit2x hard fork...


Today coinbase/GDAX released the following update regarding the Bitcoin Segwit2x hard fork:

We wanted to remind you that the upcoming Bitcoin Segwit2x hard fork is projected to take place on November 16 and will result in two bitcoin blockchains.

Following the fork:

 - GDAX will continue referring to the current bitcoin blockchain as Bitcoin with ticker BTC and the forked blockchain as Bitcoin2x with ticker B2X.

 - GDAX will disable deposits and withdrawals for Bitcoin (BTC) approximately 24 hours before the fork and re-enable 24-48 hours after the fork for both Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin2x (B2X).

 - GDAX will enable trading of both BTC and B2X within 4 hours of the fork.

 - Any customer storing Bitcoin (BTC) on GDAX at the time of the fork will be credited with an equal amount of the Bitcoin2x (B2X) asset on the Bitcoin2x blockchain.

 If the Bitcoin2x blockchain becomes the chain with the most accumulated difficulty, and the chains are in a stable state, we will consider renaming it to Bitcoin and send an additional communication at that time. We will consider other factors such as market cap, community support, etc to determine stability. We will start evaluating this 2 weeks after the fork.

Further updates will be posted on their blog.

The first Bitcoin fork is hours away - and it's a mess!


Bitcoin gold is the first of two Bitcoin forks coming up since Bitcoin Cash last August - and complications keep popping up.

On Saturday Bittrex released a statement on Bitcoin Gold (BTG), warning against it's technical limitations:

 "When considering adding tokens to Bittrex exchange we look at the risks involved. Bitcoin Gold does not satisfy our criteria for safety for our users."

They even firmly called out it's developers:

 "...information and codebase presented by the Bitcoin Gold team is not in a functional state and Bittrex will not commit to opening a Bitcoin Gold trading market."

Bittrex says they are however still committed to making sure their users receive their BTG, but it's never a good sign when they end their statement asking for the BTG development team to contact them, saying:

"We'd also like to encourage the BTG development team to reach out to us." 

Then there's Trezor, makers of the popular hardware based wallet.  While users will receive their BTG, it'll be useless, without the ability to trade or receive more without opening major security risks.

 "Bitcoin Gold’s codebase is, at the moment of the writing, incomplete. Most importantly, it lacks replay protection. For this reason, TREZOR Wallet will not support Bitcoin Gold yet, as it would endanger your bitcoins."

With the fork just hours away, buzz on twitter and reddit seems to predict an altcoin rally, as people quickly ditch their free BTG to put it into something that may have a brighter future.

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Author: Ross Davis
San Francisco News Desk