Two More Bitcoin Startups Reveal Hard Fork Contingency Plans

This week two more bitcoin-based businesses announced their company’s stance towards the upcoming 2MB hard fork this November. The fork will be implemented by the Segwit2x (BTC1) working group roughly around Saturday, November 18, 2017. The two firms Xapo and Surbtc explained to their customers how they would handle the consensus change that’s just a few weeks away.

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Xapo Will Follow the Chain With the Most Accumulated Difficulty

Bitcoiners have been waiting for the official announcements from companies who signed this summer’s New York Agreement (NYA) to increase the block size, because Core developers want nothing to do with the change. Last week the companies, Coinbase and Bitfinex gave details on how they would handle the fork. Now two more bitcoin-centric startups, Xapo and Surbtc have come forward to disclose what their plans for the fork are.

The bitcoin financial services provider Xapo on October 9 told their customers how they would handle the fork. Xapo explains that when miners process block number 494784 a block between 1-2MB will be generated. The company wants its customers to know that just like when the bitcoin cash fork took place; Xapo users don’t have to do anything. As far as the startup’s policy with forks and defining the ‘real bitcoin’ it will let the hashrate decide.

“Xapo’s policy in regards to forks is that, when there is a fork, we always follow the chain with the most accumulated difficulty and we make the minority chain available to our customers for them to sell or withdraw from Xapo,” explains the company’s most recent statement.

We are going to call the chain with the most accumulated difficulty Bitcoin or BTC. If the minority chain is the one with 1MB blocks we are going to call it BC1 and if the minority chain is the one with 2MB blocks we are going to call it BC2.

Of course, the statements made by Xapo became a controversial subject because of how they will choose to name the ‘real bitcoin.’ The startup also adds that as soon as the minority chain is deemed safe, they will make it available for withdrawal. “If you want to trust Xapo with the security of your bitcoins and access your minority chain coins there is no action needed on your part,” the startup concludes.

Latin American Exchange Surbtc Will List Both Assets as BTC and B2X if the Fork is Contentious

The Chilean Bitcoin trading platform, Surbtc, on October 10 announced its stance towards the Segwit2x hard fork. Like Xapo, the exchange Surbtc is also an NYA signer, and explains they are pleased with this summers Segwit activation and would love to see “a small increment (2mb) in the size of a block.” However, the company believes wholeheartedly in the expertise of the bitcoin Core software developers.

“Even though we would be happy to have moderately larger blocks to accommodate growing demand, we feel that Bitcoin needs (at least a majority) of bitcoin’s core developers’ support in order to do this responsibly,” explains the Surbtc executive Agustin Feuerhake. “We haven’t seen this support, and we don’t like what we currently see on the BTC1 code repository in terms of technical considerations and open source collaboration.”

All things said, if a contentious hard fork does happen, Surbtc could eventually list both assets but will allow for sure its users to at least be to withdraw both. Due to practical reasons, we will continue to list BTC, and we will incorporate B2X (or the names that catch on among the industry) later.

So far there have only been a few bitcoin-based companies that have come forward with their plans. However, this time around startups are starting to announce these plans a bit earlier than last time, as they gained some experience since the previous fork on August 1. News.bitcoin.com will be sure to keep our readers informed every step of the way before, during, and after the upcoming November hard fork.

What do you think about Xapo’s and Surbtc’s statements about the Segwit2x fork? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Xapo, and Surbtc.

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