When the Bitcoin Blockchain mines block number 494,784, which will happen on or around Saturday November 18th 2017, a block between 1MB and 2MB in size will be generated by the Bitcoin miners to increase network capacity (SegWit2x). At that point some miners may decide to ignore that block and continue mining on a 1MB block max-sized chain and that may create another fork in the Bitcoin Network.

Just like we did with the Bitcoin Cash fork, if you are a Xapo customer you don’t need to do anything, we will take care of the security of your bitcoins and we will make the new coin available for you to easily sell or withdraw from Xapo.

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.

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.

As soon as it is safe to send the minority chain to exchanges we are going to make it available to our customers for them to easily sell it or withdraw from Xapo.

We are going to do our best to continue to work without interruptions during the fork, like we were able to do during the Bitcoin Cash fork. But if we consider that doing so compromises the security of our customer’s bitcoins in any way we may decide to halt operations for a few days or up to a week, at our discretion. If you want to ensure access to your bitcoins at any time during the fork, you should withdraw your bitcoins from Xapo now.

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, we will take care of everything for you. For more information on SegWit2x visit our FAQ section.