We will provide more updates as we get closer to the November 18th Segwit2X activation date.

What is happening?

On or around November 18th a hard fork enabling the Bitcoin network to support up to 2MB blocks is expected to occur. This follows the soft fork upgrade earlier this year that added support for Segregated Witness, often referred to as SegWit, signatures to the network.

There is a real possibility that the planned hard fork will result in two Bitcoin blockchains. In this case, we will follow the chain with the most accumulated difficulty and refer to that chain as Bitcoin. To be clear, we are going to call the chain with the most accumulated difficulty Bitcoin or BTC. If the majority chain becomes the SegWit2X chain, then the minority chain is the one with 1MB blocks (pre Segwit2X chain) and we are going to call that chain BC1. However, if Segwit2X doesn’t end up being the majority chain we are going to call the Segwit2X enabled chain BC2. Other companies have announced support for this naming convention and we believe it is the best solution to the multiple coins that may result from this hard fork.

Minority Chain Coin and Bitcoin Cash

Abra intends to support Bitcoin as well as adding one-time conversion support for the minority chain coin (either BC1 or BC2) as well as Bitcoin Cash.

For users who were holding Bitcoin with Abra during the August 1 Bitcoin Cash hard fork we will make your Bitcoin Cash available to you in the form of additional Bitcoin as a one-time conversion. You will also have BC1 or BC2 made available to you in the form of additional Bitcoin so long as you don’t withdraw your Bitcoin immediately before or after the hard fork. This will also happen as a one-time conversion.

We’ll inform you when this one-time conversion is available within the Abra App via push notification as well as Email and SMS. This one-time conversion may take a few months to implement – it could potentially be sometime in early 2018 – and we appreciate your patience as we work through and carefully test the detailed implementation.

Do I need to take action?

As of now you do not need to take any action. You can leave your Abra wallet as is and no action is required.

Will I lose money if I transact?

You will not lose money if you transact with Abra today. While we hope to work without interruption during the Segwit2X fork, again, currently likely to happen on or around November 18, 2017, it is quite possible that we will have to suspend operations for several hours or even a couple of days to ensure that there is no real risk to your Bitcoin when you do transact.

Isn’t Abra a Supporter of Segwit2X?

While Abra supports Segwit2X as a viable plan for scaling Bitcoin in the short term, we will only support Segwit2X as true Bitcoin if, after activation, it becomes the longest chain in the Bitcoin network. That is the way Bitcoin was designed and we believe that was the intent of the creator of Bitcoin.

The New York Agreement (NYA) or SegWit2X, was supported by a majority of the Bitcoin industry, including Abra, as well as miners representing over 80% of the hashing power at the time of the agreement. While we recognize that there are many passionate voices among the millions of Bitcoin supporters we are making clear that our intent is to support Bitcoin via the longest chain as it was originally designed.

Next Steps…

We will send you more details as we get closer to the hard fork regarding any replay or other issues you should be aware of for when the impending hard fork happens.

To summarize, if you are holding bitcoin in your Abra App and want access to the value of your minority chain coins there is no action needed on your part, we will simply inform you when you can convert your additional minority chain coins into bitcoin. For more information or support please visit our Abra Support Pages.