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Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has clarified its position on the upcoming SegWit2x rigid fork, stating that it will use accumulated network difficulties to determine which blockchain the company will tag "Bitcoin" after the range.
On Monday, David Farmer, director of communication for Coinbase, published a blog post revealing the increasingly important position of bitcoin trading on SegWit2x. In the announcement, it seemed to indicate that Coinbase would continue to call the blockchain in place "Bitcoin" and mark the forked blockchain "Bitcoin2x". From the publication:
Following the bifurcation, Coinbase will continue to refer to the current bitcoin blockchain as Bitcoin (BTC) and the forked block chain as Bitcoin2x (B2X).
This was a significant development since Coinbase had expressed strong support for SegWit2x and had signed the New York (NYA) agreement. An industry observer has called the announcement "the nail in the coffin" for the proposal of scale.
However, on Tuesday night, Coinbase published another blog post that seemed to go back on what they had said in the previous post. Specifically, the company explained that the term "Bitcoin2x" would only be used to describe the forked chain at the time of the fork until another determination was made.
At some point after the fork, the chain "with the most difficulty accumulated" will gain this label, although the exchange has said that it may consider other factors as well:
"[After the fork] We are going to call the chain with the greatest difficulty accumulated bitcoin," Farmer explained, adding that "we will make a decision on this change, once we believe that the forks are in a stable state.We can consider other factors such as market capitalization or community support to determine stability. "
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, is excused on Twitter for the confusion caused by the original message and explained that he believed that "the market should decide (not us) – our attempt is to stay as neutral as possible here. "
The creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee – a former employee of Coinbase – criticized the move, saying it made the fork "even more uncertain and confusing." Marek "Slush" Palatinus, the founder of SlushPool, was more pointed in his objection. "The hash power does not determine what Bitcoin is, and you know it," he said.
However, as Armstrong pointed out on Twitter, the company still intends to consider community support and market capitalization in its decision, even though it did not not specify the role that she will play. "Determining when the strings are" stable "is a judgment," he conceded.
Image from Shutterstock.