Xapo announces position on Segwit2x fork

[squatter]

Xapo has made an announcement regarding their Segwit2x policy: https://blog.xapo.com/about-the-bitcoin-segwit2x-update/

Basically, they will call the chain with most accumulated difficulty "bitcoin / BTC". The minority hashrate chain will be called  "BC1" if it has a 1MB consensus rule and "BC2" if it has a 2MB consensus rule. The minority chain will be available for withdrawal and conversion but they will not offer long term support for it.

So they are basically just following the miners here. Thoughts?

[krishnapramod]

Being a NYA participant, this was expected from Xapo. At the time of BCH fork they had announced that they would support the chain with  the most accumulated difficulty. It was quite obvious that BCH was the minority chain, but miners gaming on difficulty was a different perspective.

And with this announcement they have made it clear that they follow the miners or precisely Bitcoin is ruled by miners/centralized entities agenda. In terms of hashrate/difficulty rule, at the time of split the Bitcoin chain might end up having a lower hashrate and if solely based on this Xapo decides to list the forked coin, B2X as BTC it would be absurdly unethical, I guess that's what they want, the difficulty criteria is just a facade to list B2X as Bitcoin.

Like BCH, the miners might try to game in on the difficulty between BTC and B2X. So  what the hell Xapo is going to do when difficulty keeps changing between these chains?

Anyways the November fork is going to be messy and having funds on custodial wallets that support NYA is going to further mess up the whole situation and create unnecessary confusion.

[Xavofat]

Personally, I would prefer that companies were just clear about supporting a specific side and believing that a specific side is preferable.

Even though Xapo is an NYA participant, their attitude to this situation still seems to be one of feigned neutrality, which really overcomplicates the situation, especially to the layman who understands less about all this business anyway. 

I say "feigned neutrality" because it's completely obvious that miners are going to support NYA as that's what they've promised to do.  The miners alone are not an accurate indicator of consensus.

Frankly, there's no accurate indicator of consensus except companies actually just saying that they support a side whenever they have to and listing the coins accordingly.

[OmegaStarScream]

The miners can be replaced but the community and developers cannot be. Compared to core, their software is not even well tested and has no recent commits. Whoever took the decision to support X2 either made a huge mistake or is intentionally attacking bitcoin. 25% of SegWit2X supporters already withdrawn and I expect to see more in the next few weeks. In the same time, we have exchanges that will list it as B2X like Bitfinex. In other words, they can support it as much as they want to but the final results will be the same as Bitcoin Cash.

[squatter]

Even though Xapo is an NYA participant, their attitude to this situation still seems to be one of feigned neutrality, which really overcomplicates the situation, especially to the layman who understands less about all this business anyway. 

I say "feigned neutrality" because it's completely obvious that miners are going to support NYA as that's what they've promised to do.  The miners alone are not an accurate indicator of consensus.

I wouldn't say it's obvious. They are just signalling intent more than a month away. Even F2Pool is still signalling for the NYA, even though they have said they are backing out. The futures market is also pricing the legacy chain at 3:1 to the fork. That also suggests that things may not be so clear cut.

On the other hand, I don't think that speculators are properly pricing in the market effect if, say, 90% of miners follow through and switch networks. The legacy chain could still win out in the end in that situation, but it could be a rough road until the first difficulty retarget is reached -- long block time, very high fees, and the psychological effect of being the weaker chain.

The miners can be replaced but the community and developers cannot be.

But the community, and prospective investors, could split. This could certainly be damaging to Bitcoin's network value. Nothing to write obituaries over, but still...

[Samarkand]

.... 25% of SegWit2X supporters already withdrawn and I expect to see more in the next few weeks. In the same time, we have exchanges that will list it as B2X like Bitfinex. In other words, they can support it as much as they want to but the final results will be the same as Bitcoin Cash.

I´ve only heard of very few people that have withdrawn their support from SegWit2x. According to the following website, 94.7 % of blocks are still signalling
for SegWit2x:
https://coin.dance/blocks

Of course it is possible, that some are not really supporting it and still signal the intention. However, many big players in the industry
(e.g. Bitpay or Shapeshift) support SegWit2x.
The support of big BTC related companies for SegWit2x is much bigger than the support was for Bitcoin Cash.
Everything is possible at this point and the next few weeks could really afford surprises!

[Iranus]

The miners can be replaced but the community and developers cannot be.

"The community" is extremely vague and it's difficult to say what the majority of regular BTC traders and users favour.  All that it's easy to judge is the miners and the economic majority, but mining and the economic majority are both solely about how much money you have and not about how relevant you are to the network.

I don't think that Xapo should be trying to follow any kind of consensus, but frankly in this scenario it's impossible to say which chain has the most support and be objective about it.  Xapo should just pick a side and not beat around the bush.

[gentlemand]

Everything's too vague and everything's too changeable. We've already seen how rapidly miners switched between BTC and BCH and the latter is a joke chain. If this fork actually does happen it'll be far more disruptive and confusing with potential phases where no one knows which chain is 'leading'.

If I was an NYA signee, especially one with weight, I'd declare it a partial success but the hard fork part a failure which it is by now.

[pinkflower]

Xapo has made an announcement regarding their Segwit2x policy: https://blog.xapo.com/about-the-bitcoin-segwit2x-update/

Basically, they will call the chain with most accumulated difficulty "bitcoin / BTC". The minority hashrate chain will be called  "BC1" if it has a 1MB consensus rule and "BC2" if it has a 2MB consensus rule. The minority chain will be available for withdrawal and conversion but they will not offer long term support for it.

So they are basically just following the miners here. Thoughts?

This doesnt look good for the community. Are the merchants with the most customers going to play with what the miners want now? This will further centralize BTC's development and it could now be pressured by the government because theres a single point of failure, almost.

If you care about BTC, withdraw your coins from Xapos.

[squatter]

Xapo has made an announcement regarding their Segwit2x policy: https://blog.xapo.com/about-the-bitcoin-segwit2x-update/

Basically, they will call the chain with most accumulated difficulty "bitcoin / BTC". The minority hashrate chain will be called  "BC1" if it has a 1MB consensus rule and "BC2" if it has a 2MB consensus rule. The minority chain will be available for withdrawal and conversion but they will not offer long term support for it.

So they are basically just following the miners here. Thoughts?

This doesnt look good for the community. Are the merchants with the most customers going to play with what the miners want now? This will further centralize BTC's development and it could now be pressured by the government because theres a single point of failure, almost.

If you care about BTC, withdraw your coins from Xapos.

If I wrap my tin foil hat on tight enough, this could even be a grand conspiracy to centralize Bitcoin, backed by governments and central banks. If I were a government worried about cryptocurrencies threatening national monetary sovereignty, I would back efforts to centralize Bitcoin.

Bitcoin users -- much like consumers in a corporate-controlled world -- would begin to sacrifice trust to the most powerful companies (including mining outfits) if the hard fork is successful. That would set a useful precedent for governments who want more influence over Bitcoin (and by extension, all cryptocurrencies).

[gentlemand]

If I wrap my tin foil hat on tight enough, this could even be a grand conspiracy to centralize Bitcoin, backed by governments and central banks. If I were a government worried about cryptocurrencies threatening national monetary sovereignty, I would back efforts to centralize Bitcoin.

Bitcoin users -- much like consumers in a corporate-controlled world -- would begin to sacrifice trust to the most powerful companies (including mining outfits) if the hard fork is successful. That would set a useful precedent for governments who want more influence over Bitcoin (and by extension, all cryptocurrencies).

If sinister forces are attempting that then they're far too premature. Centralised services are still detested by many Bitcoin fans, not necessarily for spiritual reasons but more to do with them being shit most of the time.

Centralisation has produced thefts, delays, lock outs, failures. It has to be better than anything else for it to be seductive enough to lull people.

If I was a proper conspiracy theorist I'd point to Core as the real implants. Stuff like Jihan Wu's attempts to hijack BTC are so laughably amateurish that no serious player would instigate them. The proper Trojan is sitting right where people don't look in plain sight.

[squatter]

If I wrap my tin foil hat on tight enough, this could even be a grand conspiracy to centralize Bitcoin, backed by governments and central banks. If I were a government worried about cryptocurrencies threatening national monetary sovereignty, I would back efforts to centralize Bitcoin.

Bitcoin users -- much like consumers in a corporate-controlled world -- would begin to sacrifice trust to the most powerful companies (including mining outfits) if the hard fork is successful. That would set a useful precedent for governments who want more influence over Bitcoin (and by extension, all cryptocurrencies).

If sinister forces are attempting that then they're far too premature. Centralised services are still detested by many Bitcoin fans, not necessarily for spiritual reasons but more to do with them being shit most of the time.

Centralisation has produced thefts, delays, lock outs, failures. It has to be better than anything else for it to be seductive enough to lull people.

If I was a proper conspiracy theorist I'd point to Core as the real implants. Stuff like Jihan Wu's attempts to hijack BTC are so laughably amateurish that no serious player would instigate them. The proper Trojan is sitting right where people don't look in plain sight.

Ah, I think you've been around the block a few times. People in this space are by and large fairly clueless. That's the thing about the S curve; most people in the space are much closer to being noobs than experts. I saw a statistic today (on Kyle Torpey's Twitter) -- something like 40% of on-chain transactions on the network use Blockchain.info's service.

So, seeing their statement today (which basically copy/pasted Xapo's) was a bit unnerving. They can "passively harvest" their entire userbase to this fork if the miners switch chains, much like Ethereum did in the DAO hard fork. In that case, all the major wallets hard forked by default.