The Failure of SegWit2x

The Failure of SegWit2x Shows Bitcoin is Digital Gold, Not Just a Better PayPal

The New York Agreement is sometimes credited for bringing the Segregated Witness (SegWit) improvement to the Bitcoin network (others say it was the user-activated soft fork outlined in Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148), but the hard-forking capacity increase that was attached to the agreement has failed to gain much traction. For that reason, support for the 2x increase has waned and a number of CEOs who pledged their support for both changes have withdrawn their advocacy for the change.

Some have pointed to the hard-forking increase associated with SegWit2x as a contentious waste of time, but there was also much to be learned from the whole experience.

One key takeaway is that it now seems clear that the base Bitcoin protocol is more of a digital gold than an improvement on PayPal or Visa. Having said that, better versions of those payment systems can still be built on top of that base Bitcoin layer.