Daniel Vogel
Building Bitcoin in Mexico with @bitso. @stanford CSE & Economics, @quantcast, @harvardhbs MBA
Nov 2   https://blog.bitso.com/planes-para-el-segwit2x-bitcoin-hard-fork-e347117298e8



Plans for the SegWit2x Bitcoin Hard Fork


Users of the Bitso platform do not have to take any action since their BTC funds will be safe.

In this blog post we present detailed information on the current situation of Bitcoin for the benefit and safety of our users.

If you still do not know what a "Fork" is, we recommend you read our blog about Bitcoin Forks.

In Block 494,784 of the Bitcoin block chain will occur a Hard Fork. This will be approximately during the dawn of November 16, 2017. This is a contentious bifurcation (there is no consensus among the players of the network) and the expectation is that two chains will survive. One of the chains will be governed by the code maintained by the Bitcoin Core team and the other will be governed by the code generated by the segwit2x (or btc1) team.

For us it is important to serve our customers and therefore we will support both chains.

Nomenclature

The chain governed by the current Bitcoin rules (and governed by the Bitcoin Core team) will continue to be called Bitcoin (BTC).

The chain governed by the new rules (and governed by the segwit2x team) will be called Bitcoin2x (B2X).

Given the uncertainty of this Hard Fork and the probable unviability of any of the chains, we may decide to change this nomenclature in the future.

Balances

Any user of the Bitso platform that has a balance of BTC will be credited with an equal amount of B2X using as reference the moment of publication of block 494,783 (the last common block of the two chains). The accreditation of these funds may take several hours or days.

Announcements and Retreats of Bitcoin

From the block 494,700 the funding and withdrawals of Bitcoin will be suspended in the Bitso platform. Any funding that is confirmed after block 494,700 will be credited when funding operations resume. The Hard Fork is technically complex due to the lack of "replay protection". This will cause the funds and withdrawals of Bitcoin and Bitcoin2x to remain closed indefinitely until we can summarize them safely.

Markets

Bitso's markets will continue to operate normally. Two new markets will be added after the fork: MXN / B2X and BTC / B2X.


Frequent questions

How do you plan to protect bitcoins if there is no replay protection?

     “There are different ways to ensure that transactions on one side of the fork are invalid on the other side of the fork. At the moment we are planning to use a method called "tainting" to prevent transactions from being valid in both chains, but we are still exploring options.”

I heard there was a fork called Bitcoin Gold, why were not those funds credited?

     “At the time of writing this blog, the Bitcoin Gold code is still not functional. There is no bifurcated blockchain for Bitcoin Gold. For this reason there is no support within Bitso for Bitcoin Gold.”

When will they enable BCH funding and withdrawals?

     “We are working on solving this as soon as possible and we hope to achieve it in the coming days. We will announce in our social networks when these are enabled.”

Thanks to Luis César, Marisol Vargas, Ben Peters, Belen Scaglia, Santiago Creixell, and Ernesto Contreras Escalona.