A newly released statement from major exchanges today may have stoked tensions in the ongoing bitcoin scaling debate – but it also revealed more about how the confrontation is becoming increasingly complex.
Today, nearly 20 exchanges announced that, should a certain developer group take actions that would split the bitcoin blockchain into two competing networks, the network running software developed by Bitcoin Core would retain the ticker symbol ‘BTC’. Bitcoin Unlimited, the alternative option, would then be advertised as ‘BTU’.
Ostensively aimed at preventing customer confusion, the move has already been highly politicized, with some supporters of the Bitcoin Core development team heralding it as the effective end of the Unlimited project and its particular proposal for redrafting bitcoin’s rules.
"Mining pools may signal Bitcoin Unlimited, but this letter makes it crystal clear that the economy won't accept it – the best outcome they can hope for is to have their BTU token listed," former BTCC COO Samson Mow alleged in a statement.
However, to exchange officials, the move is designed not to provoke, but to be forward-thinking in how it safeguards user funds. (A key component of the messaging is that to list the alternative, the exchanges would require a guarantee that users would be protected from attacks).
Further, major exchange representatives are saying that the statement does not mean that they intend to act as decision-makers. Rather, it's that they’re open to having the market naturally settle the issue.
http://www.coindesk.com/majority-bitcoin-exchange-accord-reveals-hard-fork-dilemma/
