Bitcoin Forum

Mysterious Group BitPico Threatens to Execute the Bitcoin Hard Fork

Mysterious individual or group operating under the name “BitPico” has vowed that it will activate the SegWit2x hard fork as planned despite the decision by leading proponents to suspend the controversial scaling proposal indefinitely.

As CCN reported on Wednesday, a group of leading SegWit2x advocates — including developer Jeff Garzik, project lead Mike Belshe, and Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu — published a joint statement calling off the hard fork until consensus for the upgrade could be achieved. With these influential personalities calling for the fork’s suspension, the community breathed a sigh of relief that a blockchain split had been avoided — or at least postponed.

However, at least one entity is vowing to activate the hard fork as scheduled. That person or group is BitPico, a hitherto unknown entity that has nevertheless been active on the SegWit2x mailing list.

Here is BitPico’s full statement, which was sent as a reply to the joint statement calling off the fork:

    “We are carrying out the fork regardless as everything is set in motion. Backing down the difficulty right now is a strategy. Wonder why 30% network hash-rate disappeared?  It’s ours; the miners that will continue what is set in motion… A handful of humans cannot stop what they have no control over…”


Who is BitPico?

The most significant part of BitPico’s threat to execute SegWit2x is that he, she, or they control 30% of the bitcoin hashrate and have made it disappear from the network. But despite this bold claim, no one is quite sure who or what BitPico is. This, coupled with several other observations, makes the vow that the hard fork will activate as scheduled appear dubious.

First, BitPico did not sign the New York Agreement (NYA) that set SegWit2x into motion, nor was it publicly “shamed” by Bitcoin.org in its list of SegWit2x supporters. Were BitPico really as influential as it claims, there would certainly be more evidence of its existence.

Second, BitPico claimed in an email last month that their pool accounted for 1.72% of the global hashrate and that they were in the process of adding another 3-4% by the end of October. So by their own admission, that would mean that their share of the hashrate had grown by at least 24% in less than two weeks — a highly unlikely scenario, especially considering that this group has very little online footprint aside from a vacant Github repository and a sparsely-used Twitter feed.

Third, although the hash rate has made a minor decline since Wednesday, the dip is nowhere near 30% and is most likely part of the network’s normal fluctuations.

Finally, the threat appears hollow even if you accept the group’s claim its software is “enterprise-grade,” which is why it has not been active on Github. Even if the group did account for 30% of the hashrate, that would not be enough to make SegWit2x the “chain with the most accumulated difficulty,” which is the standard that SegWit2x-supporting companies such as Xapo and Coinbase stated they would use to determine which blockchain is “Bitcoin”.

Taking these factors into consideration, it does not appear that one should take BitPico’s threat to activate SegWit2x seriously.



Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/mysterious-group-bitpico-threatens-to-execute-segwit2x-hard-fork/

First, never heard of this group or group of individuals. And why are they just coming out today? Is this another break-away group? But I have to agree with some points of the article. All their claims is out of this world. The rest of the gang has already spoke and they want to postponed the fork because its gonna be messy and I think common sense has prevailed. Then this BitPico came out of nowhere, they said they have the hashrate to deploy the hard fork? Where are they going to get the software? It looks like they are just out there to create one giant FUD and I don't think that they can execute Segwit2x and they will not get any support from anyone. And yes, don't take them seriously.  ;D

Well i think the people behind this group BitPico is the butthurt investors that invested in segwit2x and lost their money due to cancellation of hard fork they are just spreading the FUD and also, this group came out of nowhere and just claiming that they have the 30% of the hashrate of the network and they will execute the hard fork i think this is a fake claim although i saw the letter in their mailing list. if this was true how can they maintain it since the lead developer jeff garzik called off the fork and most of the mining pools dropped the support after this news came out. this is a pure FUD don't take this seriously

Well, we've already seen more than 30% of hashrate going to Bitcoin Cash for a short time, it was a little disruptive, but nothing serious to even damage Bitcoin's price. But what this BitPico group can achieve is merely creating the worst altcoin in existence, because it doesn't have replay protection with Bitcoin's network. Miners would be able to sell their coins freely, because their mining rewards won't be affected by this, but it will be the problem for users so the price won't be able to grow. And SegWit2x futures were never even close to 30% of Bitcoin's value, so it's unlikely that mining this coin would be profitable at all. In my opinion, this sounds like some kind of trolling or FUD.

Well, if this BitPico group can do it, then they would and maybe we could see if what they are saying is just a bluff or a fact! However, we all know that this move has no support of the many and we are expecting BitPico, as part of the Bitcoin community, to respect the decision of the greater majority otherwise BitPico can just be isolating itself. These people should learn to respect the decision which is considered to be for the greater good of all concern.

well bitfinex futures are only 150$ im gonna gamble! 10x or nothing.