Presumably you can sell contracts short on HitBTC, too. But this all sounds pretty dicey. There are ways to do cash delivery (or bitcoin delivery) if there is a reliable underlying market and good liquidity, but here, there is neither. I don't understand how it can work unless they are splitting your coins into two different assets, like what BTCC and Bitfinex are doing. As long as the exchange is employing proper replay protection, they should be able to properly deliver on B2X contracts.

But that means they need to lock up your BTC, right? I mean, neither BT1 nor BT2 (or their equivalent on BTCC) actually exist as real assets. Their existence is contingent upon the fork actually happening. If the fork doesn't happen, BT1 = BTC, and BT2 = 0. If HitBTC is offering these contracts without taking these precautions, I'd stay away from them.

It's obvious that they are trying to leverage the biggest cryptocurrency network to bootstrap their own. Bitcoin Cash definitely started a trend and I don't see it stopping anytime soon.

Old timers should appreciate the fact that noobs will be fleeced into buying "the next Bitcoin." Most people I've talked to, when they first entered this space, bought into altcoins because "Bitcoin was too expensive." This time around, we as BTC holders get to profit because people are buying into hard forks w/ airdrops instead of newly launched coins. It feels a little dirty taking peoples' money like that, but what are we supposed to do?

It's unfortunate, especially the timing of it as we approach the fork. It helps feed the narrative that 2x is necessary. There's no way around the fact that network spam is really bad right now. I've never seen this kind of sustained spam on the network. They have done it for many days now and presumably won't stop until after the fork. And they are creating bottlenecks at different fee rates: this is a very calculated move, not just a barrage of random network transactions.

I feel your pain.....when possible, do cash transactions and avoid necessitating deposit to Localbitcoins at all.

There is no legal precedent for what defines "Bitcoin." One can make the argument that "validity" in the whitepaper is informative, but it's an incredibly vague standard, legally. I think you are overestimating your armchair attorney skills.

I'm quite sure that Coinbase is expending massive amounts for legal advice on how to approach forks. They answer only to their customers, not bitcoin holders at large. As long as they provide customers full access to all assets in custody and are very clear about how those assets are defined, what damages can be claimed? It's easy to scream "I'm going to sue you!" It's harder to argue a case.


That's all well and good. I'm fine with full blocks and I think that block size should be smaller than 1MB. In fact, I opposed Segwit's block size increase. None of this is relevant to the legal arguments about forking, though.

I wouldn't put much into the futures markets. For one thing, it really can't inform us about future demand, which will be heavily influenced by future contingencies. Which coin will have majority hash rate? We don't know. Which coin will have the "BTC" ticker on the largest US and Japanese exchanges? We don't know; that depends on miners and on Bitflyer articulating their hard fork policy more clearly.

The B2X futures contracts (e.g. on HitBTC) are wild speculation. They can go to zero. And the coin split contracts on Bitfinex only tell us that there are more ideological dumpers on the #No2x side. But that group could end up being so small vs. total supply that it doesn't matter. The low volume of all these markets suggests that we can't take them very seriously, either.

One would think that parties interested in creating the perception of a successful 2x fork would want to pump the price of the futures markets. But maybe not: as we see with Bitcoin Cash, after hitting rock bottom, the hype cycle can start once again. It may be more effective to show a rise from the bottom to paint the perception of 2x "overtaking" Bitcoin.

I'm increasingly less concerned about the lack of replay protection because that issue has gotten a lot of press. I've seen lots of newbies asking about it, and I think services are very prepared this time around after the ETH/ETC debacle last year.

What I'm more concerned about is the increasing hash rate. Difficulty increased significantly on the last adjustment, and will likely do so again shortly before the fork. That means the hash rate will be split (between the two chains) right after difficulty increase. This could cause significant disruption, congestion and high fees.

Bitcoin Cash is rallying, and they are also set to fork to return to a Bitcoin-like difficulty algorithm a day or two before the Segwit2x fork. That's no coincidence. They are setting it up so users will go to Bitcoin Cash for the reliability and low fees, and hash power will come to Bitcoin Cash for the profitability amidst the difficulty clusterfuck in Bitcoin.

I'm hopeful, but I'm also keeping this disaster contingency in mind.

That's probably because it's not news yet. The report is just based on the opinions of advisors who are set to meet with the Indian government regarding cryptocurrency regulation. It doesn't bode well, but it also doesn't indicate what the government will actually do. I think it's reasonable to expect that some governments will follow China and Vietnam with anti-Bitcoin regulations.

In time, they'll back down from these positions when they see how ineffective they are. In reality, it's good news in the long term. Governments banning Bitcoin means it's made the big time. We've made it, guys!

Personally, I don't trade there. I got burned pretty bad when they got "hacked" last year, and don't trust their competence. I also think they have a target on their back from US regulators/law enforcement because they are an unlicensed money service business and because of their debt token scheme last year (unregistered securities).

That said, closing US accounts is just a technicality. Since they don't enforce any KYC anyway, you can just register a new account with a VPN. Just be careful to set up your VPN to prevent leaking your IP address and connect from outside of the US -- problem solved.

Yeah, that would help. I was looking into buying some BCO for the long term, with plans to stake and/or provide liquidity on the DEX. I'm sure it'll take time to develop liquid markets, but it seems like a project with long term prospects.

But I'm not comfortable sending BTC to Nova given all its recent problems and the announcement of closure. The only other markets I see listed on Coinmarketcap are the DEX itself, I believe. Anyone interested in selling me some OTC? Are there any other markets not listed on Coinmarketcap?

People who are adamantly against 2X jump at every chance to say NYA companies are dropping out, but every time they mention one, it's a company I've never heard of. What the hell is Bitso? Or Wayniloans? Someone page me when BitFlyer, BitPay, Bitmain, Bitfury, Bixin, Blockchain, BTC.com, BTCC, BTC.TOP, Coinbase, ShapeShift, etc. drop out of the agreement.


Yeah, it's the standard Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin Classic move. Can't make the argument that people are using the network if nodes don't exist, right? That said, I think that people are overly confident that no one will care if a majority of the hash rate leaves the network. They didn't care with BCH -- but in that case, no one was calling BCH "Bitcoin" or giving it the BTC ticker. Bitpay and Shapeshift weren't leaving the network, etc...

To be fair, he acknowledged the reality that not all stakeholders were on board with the "upgrade" but apparently believes that this is an important test of Bitcoin's ability to upgrade. Similarly, it seems that some people on the #NO2X side also see this as an important test of Bitcoin's ability to reject attempts to break consensus and "force" upgrades.

As for the original question, I think the market is currently pricing in a high possibility that the fork does not occur. As a contrarian trader, especially when I look at how arrogant and sure of themselves the #NO2X side has become, I believe this may be a bad assumption.

I'm not willing to place bets right now, especially because I would never send money to Bitfinex, but I definitely won't be selling my B2X coins in the short term.

It never makes sense to buy at the initial launch unless you are immediately selling. Supply on the ask sides will always be low. Like most altcoins, it's best to only quickly flip (intra-day trade) new launches. Long term, wait to enter when the chart has based on the daily/weekly time frame at least.

The launch has been crappy, but I wouldn't write it off yet. The public testnet has been launched, and the developers expect that the mainnet will be launched in the next couple days. Long term, I don't have high hopes for this coin, but in the short term I think we might get another round of hype when it finally launches.

This is one of the reasons why I think the #NO2X people are way too confident. Coinbase/GDAX will assign the "Bitcoin" name and "BTC" ticker to the chain with most cumulative work regarding Segwit2x. That means that if miners says so, the single biggest US exchange market (and the most convenient way for US residents to buy BTC) will facilitate a chain split that could seriously damage the Bitcoin brand and split its community. And given Brian Armstrong's history, I think we can expect this to happen.

Same goes for BitFlyer: biggest exchange in the fastest-growing market in the world (Japan). They signed the NYA but haven't provided details yet regarding what happens after the fork.

As I expected, the Bitcoin Gold fork has caused "fork fatigue." Even newbies are now complaining about "endless hard forks".... unwittingly or not, the BTG team may have delivered victory against Segwit2x to Core. After Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold, hard forks just look like altcoins.

But I wouldn't get too comfortable yet. This fork has no replay protection and the developers intend for the original chain to die. Further, this fork has the support of some of the industries biggest players -- miners, exchanges, payment processors. Whatever you do, keep your BTC safe at fork time and be very careful sending coins after the fork. It's much harder to get your "free money" with this fork without losing coins.

No, I wouldn't make that analogy at all. And due to the decentralized nature of the protocols and markets, there is no peg, of course. The ratio (price) is whatever someone else is willing to pay. Currently, B2X contracts are trading at ~15% value and BTC contracts at ~85% value -- these percentages refer to value in a coin split scenario.

People on both sides will be incentivized to support their chain and dump the other. I'm worried that both chains will suffer from the increasing difficulty as we approach the fork. Between the market's exuberance and the rising difficulty into a contentious fork, I'm getting nervous.

A fork is just a different version of the protocol. A hard fork is an incompatible version of the protocol. That doesn't mean that replay protection is not necessary. If address/transaction format is identical between the two chains and the UTXO set is copied, transactions can be replayed on the second chain.

That means if you hold BTC and BTG on the same address and you try to send your BTG, your transaction could also be sent on the BTC chain. You could therefore lose BTC. This is the danger of replay attacks, and it's why adding protection against them is important.

The btc1 developers don't intend for this to be like Bitcoin Cash. They intend for it to be an "update" and for the legacy chain to die. That seems unlikely, but you should be aware that this is the intent.

A related issue is that there is no replay protection for the fork. What that means is the btc1 developers have made it very difficult for anyone to send money on one chain without losing it on the other chain. So, be aware that you need to carefully split your BTC and B2X coins before sending them to addresses that you don't control.

It's unpredictable. Since there is no replay protection, each exchange will be employing their own dodgy internal replay protection to split the BTC they have in custody. Hopefully all goes smoothly for every exchange, but it should be assumed for any exchange that delays/complications could arise. The thing is, we have very little experience here. The exchange that performed best last time around (Bittrex) probably can't be expected to outdo everyone else again.

I would say if you are willing to keep your coins with a third party that your best bet at this time is Bitfinex. At least they have been very clear about how the fork will go down. Bittrex hasn't been forthright. Coinbase has promised full deposit/withdrawal/trading capabilities within a few days, but historically they are a bad exchange to use in these situations.

It's too late to do anything now. The UTXO snapshot that will serve as the UTXO set on the BTG blockchain already happened almost a week ago. Wherever your coins were at Block 491,407, that's where BTG will be when the network launches.


Wise? No. Ignorant? Yes. This is what people mean by the S-curve of technology adoption. Increasingly, users of Bitcoin don't understand how it works, why it exists, or the risks inherent to third party custody. Many of these newbies will find out the hard way why they should never leave funds on any exchange for long.

What if people stop buying gold? How is that any different? My expectation is that price will go down. If literally nobody wants to buy BTC anymore, then its price will go to $0 and volume will evaporate entirely.

Unless there is a fundamental protocol failure, I don't see that happening. And even if there was such a failure, I think BTC would be forked to fix it, and demand would return. I guess in that case, there would technically be no buyers for legacy BTC, as we would all have moved to the forked version.