Mysterious Group BitPico Threatens to Execute the Bitcoin Hard Fork
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.
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