Sydney, Australia-based bitcoin exchange Independent Reserve has announced that in order to ensure the safety of customer funds, they will be temporarily suspending bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on July 30th, at 18:00 UTC+10.

The exchange will re-enable this functionality only when it’s confident that Bitcoin transactions can be processed reliably.

As many are aware of, on August 1st, the Bitcoin User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) is scheduled to activate. The UASF is intended to address scaling issues faced by the Bitcoin network by accelerating the adoption of Segregated Witness.

The activation of UASF may result in disruptions to the Bitcoin network and cause transactions to become unreliable for a period of time. It may also lead to a fork in the blockchain, resulting in two or more versions of Bitcoin.

Adrian Przelozny CEO, Independent Reserve said:

“In the event of a permanent split in the Bitcoin blockchain, we will endeavor to make forked balances available for customer withdrawal, however, this will be subject to our assessment of the technical risks posed by the fork, such as replay attacks and other factors that could create network instability.” “Customers who wish to access their Bitcoin on both chains at the time of the fork should withdraw their Bitcoin from Independent Reserve since we cannot guarantee what will happen during the fork or when we will be able to restore Bitcoin deposit and withdrawal functionality.”

“Thank you for your support and understanding.”

This is a supplement to the UASF announcement made on July 15 and concerns the Bitcoin User Activated Hard Fork proposal (UAHF).

The User Activated Hard Fork (UAHF), including Bitcoin ABC, is a proposal to alter the Bitcoin protocol by creating a new fork of the Bitcoin software, which will operate on its own separate blockchain.

The UAHF is scheduled to activate on approximately August 1, 2017. The UAHF differs from UASF because it is incompatible with the current Bitcoin protocol and will create a separate blockchain.

Should the UAHF activate, Independent Reserve will not support the new UAHF blockchain or its associated coin Bitcoin Cash.

Any Bitcoin within customer accounts will remain accessible over the main blockchain only, and will not be converted into coins on the UAHF chain. If users wish to ensure access to any resultant UAHF coins, please withdraw Bitcoin from Independent Reserve prior to July 30th, 18:00 UTC+10.