Well, they plan on running the btc1 software, which copies the UTXO set from Bitcoin. So yes, you get the free coins. However, there will not be replay protection (which has been repeated ad nauseum). So be very careful trying to recover the B2X.

Since the fork was called off by the bigger companies, there is much less demand for coin splitting services, since most people expect the fork to be a non-event now. That's bad news for newbies trying to get their "free money."

That's really the key here: there is a massive knowledge gap in Bitcoin. And honestly, it's getting worse all the time. It never really dawned on me until recently that this is how the "S-curve" works. As time goes by, more and more of the user base understands less and less about Bitcoin (because at any given time, most users are relatively new).

The whole experience with BIP148, Bcash, Bgold and Segwit2x really show that most people simply don't understand how Bitcoin works at all. Consensus is an opt-in ruleset that you can join or leave; it is not something agreed upon in a room nor by the community at large. Most people do not understand the gravity of a real permanent network split, and how that damages network (and brand) value. Further, most people don't seem to understand how to distinguish bitcoins from altcoins; they just go with the crowd. This doesn't bode well for the future, when the attacks orchestrated by, say, governments will be much worse than these amateur attacks by Bitmain or Blockchain.info.

I believe that in some countries, particularly in the US, it's becoming harder for unlicensed exchanges to process fiat deposits/withdrawals. Bitfinex was cut off entirely from the US banking system. Kraken is now having increasing problems, too. And Bittrex's promises of adding fiat markets seem unlikely to ever pan out at this rate.

I've had zero problems with Coinbase/GDAX -- reliable and free ACH deposits/withdrawals within a few days and wires are possible. And I've heard good things about Gemini with regard to fiat processing. I can't trade there personally because they won't accept my ID.

There is even some regulatory uncertainty regarding banks dealing with licensed exchanges, with some banks considered "unfriendly" to crypto in general. So it's not just a matter of exchanges improving things. We need better regulatory guidance for the legacy financial system to feel safe interfacing with crypto.

It depends on your jurisdiction, as that will affect which credit cards (if any) are accepted. For me, it costs 4% to buy via credit card, which I think is crazy, but for some people it's totally acceptable.

In my locality, high volume cash sellers (the few that still exist) are charging 2-6%. But I generally wait for someone to take my offer at 0-2% profit. I also have some old contacts who often need liquidity and will pay spot price so they can keep charging a mark-up to the newbies.

If you are in the US, I would ACH transfer to Coinbase (free) and transfer to GDAX and buy via limit order (free). If in Europe, I'd probably go with Bitstamp and use SEPA. You might consider putting up your own offers on LocalBitcoins, too.

At a glance, that sounds good, but why would institutional investors be trading at Bitfinex? In some jurisdictions, there are fully licensed ETNs. There are CFTC-regulated futures live now on LedgerX, and CME is coming next month. The finance sector seems to have reached consensus that an ETF in the United States isn't far off, either. And GBTC has been trading for years now, and fetches a very hefty premium due to its availability to mainstream investors.

I find it very hard to believe that institutional investors would be pumping tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into an unlicensed/unregulated entity with a very questionable past (the unexplained hack, the debt tokens, etc).

Solutions to network congestion take time to build if we are to retain decentralized miners and nodes. The massive delay from miners in activating Segwit set the ecosystem back more than a year in that respect. So much time was spent arguing and negotiating instead of facilitating early adoption of Segwit (gradual easing in fees) and building the Lightning Network and other fee-saving mechanisms.

Also, keep in mind that miners like Bitmain have an interest in the Bitcoin network being congested: it helps them pump Bitcoin Cash and it might not cost that much, because they are mining blocks and recouping the fees they spent.

Just be careful buying into these. They are often fly-by-night projects set up by anonymous developers who just throw up a whitepaper overnight and airdrop a bunch of coins. It's all well and good if you get them for free. But usually what happens is the developers wait until the market has risen a bit, and then they dump all their coins on the investors. Then the project basically dies.

So I would treat them all with this in mind. They are much less likely to succeed in the long term than POW coins or well-run ICOs.

I wouldn't hold out that long. Most of these airdrop tokens will not last in the long term, although some of them have pump-and-dump potential. The proof-of-stake aspect assists with that, as Peter Todd has pointed out.

I've only taken part in a couple airdrops, but I should probably put a bit more time into it. My best one to date was Ethereum Lite -- managed to get out with nearly $800 worth of ETH at the height. Like many of these projects, it turned out to be a scam, with the devs dumping everything they held on the market and claiming they were "hacked."

Actually, I think there is more drama incoming. Just wait until the Bitcoin Cash guys start their marketing push. They're already giving us a taste, with Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, Calvin Ayre, Kim Dotcom, Craig Wright/Jon Matonis and others shilling for them.

Now that 2X is out of the way and the CEOs that backed it are probably feeling salty, BCH is the obvious answer for them. The chart looks healthy, too, as much as I hate to say it. My guess is that the next major FUD/attack/competition will come from that angle.

You can be sure that this isn't over, and that their next attempt won't include replay protection either. Give it one year. Belche (Bitgo), Armstrong (Coinbase), Pair (Bitpay) and others are very determined to see many massive on-chain capacity increases in the future, which is only possible via hard fork.

I'm glad that the some of the CEOs pushing the fork backed down. But I'm disappointed in general with the obvious knowledge gap that needs to be overcome around consensus issues.

I think that the Bitcoin/altcoin relationship is not so binary. The pattern is cyclical. Under the right conditions (stability/sideways-up price movement in the Bitcoin market), money tends to flow into altcoins for three reasons: 1) Some BTC buyers buy in to enter altcoins/tokens specifically. 2) Others eventually looks for ways to spend or invest their BTC, including buying altcoins/tokens. 3) Both of these activities lessen the amount of available BTC supply on the exchanges, driving prices upwards.

In addition, altcoins act as testbeds for BTC. Segwit was implemented on multiple altcoins before it was finally activated on Bitcoin, and I think that helped it gain wider acceptance. I think the relationship is quite symbiotic.

The Segwit2x fork is dead, yes. But there's no doubt in my mind that the same CEOs will make a similar effort in the future. People like Mike Belche and Stephen Pair and Peter Smith..... they are building their companies like all venture capitalists do in the tech sector: growth before anything else.

Belche (BitGo) wants to see hundreds of capacity increases far past the 8x increase that Segwit2x sought. They'll be back. Next time around, they'll have this experience under their belt. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Jihan Wu will have a better idea where Bitmain fits in the next time around.

We don't know the exact date. It's based on block height (494,784), not time. There's been a lot of new hash power coming online, resulting in shorter block times. We also have another difficulty adjustment approaching. I'd say it's safe to say that the fork will occur sometime between the 14th-17th.

But if you need to move coins, consider moving them sooner, given the high level of network congestion we are seeing right now, and the warnings from exchanges about deposit/withdrawal delays near the fork.

If you read through his posts, he is absolutely not a newb. It's someone from the Bitcoin community that studied and exploited the vulnerability. His trolling about Ethereum's lack of immutability makes it obvious.

To be honest, I stopped trusting the Parity wallet months ago due to their history of bad testing and buggy code. Trusting their multi-sig contract would have been crazy; anyone using it didn't do their due diligence.

It seems like the number of users affected is likely low, although a couple ICOs will be crushed by this. I don't think we can expect a hard fork in this case. I hope that this experience teaches people to stop trusting smart contracts in these early stages. The core protocol is sound, but it's simply too easy at this point to publish bad contracts where major losses will occur.

The interface leaves much to be desired, but the primary functionality -- fully decentralized orderbook/exchange on the blockchain -- works great. I take advantage of the low liquidity that everyone complains about by leaving low bids and high asks on the book. They often get filled, at least partially, at considerably better price than more liquid exchanges.

I can also rest easy at night knowing that my funds are safe and can be retrieved from the smart contract into my public address anytime I want. They are making a good deal in fees, so hopefully they improve the UI a bit, though. It's definitely not noob-proof.... I'll say that much.

These things move in cycles. The ICO rush, and to a lesser extent the ERC20 airdrop rush, both helped fuel the ETH bubble and to sustain the current price levels. I think that's what we're seeing now in Bitcoin, too -- additional incentive to hold BTC due to airdrops/dividends.

One thing to keep in mind this time around is that there is no replay protection on this fork. This might not be "free money" because it could come with a lot of confusion and lost money. I have a pretty good grasp of how to secure my funds and I know to be careful since there is no protection from replay attacks. But I'm still nervous. Hopefully Jeff Garzik comes around and they add optional replay protection back to the repository.

In the long term, I suspect money will flow to legacy BTC. However, I do see a situation building where the increased difficulty on the BTC chain, combined with the 2x chain split, could make the situation really bad for both chains.

Bitcoin Cash is also changing the difficulty algorithm to remove the EDA, to be more like the original Bitcoin. This is a calculated move IMO, given the timing. Bitmain and company are trying to build the narrative that both legacy BTC and 2x are not the "original vision of Satoshi." And it looks like they are going to use stuck chains and high fees after the fork to help further that narrative. The game theory..... interesting stuff.

As someone mentioned, DOGE transaction fees are very cheap, but the problem is liquidity. You may end up having to sell 1 satoshi/coin or more below your buying price if you want to quickly enter and exit the market. At these prices, that ends up being 6% + that you are losing in value, so it's not worth it.

For low-value transactions from exchanges, LTC is one of the better coins to use. It's a much more liquid market, so you won't need to worry about slippage as much. You also need to consider trading commissions in these situations; you are generally paying 0.2-0.25% on each side of the trade.

Fair enough, but Bitcoin Cash isn't worthless. It's a top 5 coin and moving upwards. In terms of price action/technical analysis, the BCH/BTC chart actually looks pretty bullish. It looks like a base with a possible cup and handle forming. Holding your BCH now equates to an 8.5% dividend. It could be worth considerably more in the future too, considering the uncertain fundamental situation with B2X and the general frustration with high fees in spite of Segwit.

I don't think that Bitcoin Cash has strong long term fundamentals. And neither will B2X. But there may be considerable opportunity to profit from this chaos. I'm not saying anyone needs to keep money on an exchange, either. Since there is no replay protection for B2X, just wait until a guide is published about how to safely split the coins.

GDAX can be a hassle to verify with, especially with their webcam/mobile app requirement. But I will say that once I was able to get verified, I really enjoy trading with 0% fees for maker (limit) orders.

I'd check out Bitstamp if I were you. You can expect standard verification requirements (passport or government ID, proof of residence). They are EUR-friendly and have cheap SEPA deposits and withdrawals, but they convert funds to USD on deposit. They don't have EUR markets, just USD.