Coinbase announces the final testing phase of SegWit...

Coinbase has announced via Twitter:

"Our engineering team has begun the final testing phase of SegWit for Bitcoin on Coinbase.

SegWit compatible Bitcoin sends/receives will be available for customers in the next few weeks."

SegWit will enable a tremendous cost savings on transacting Bitcoin - alleviating its so-called "fatal flaw", at least up until this implementation. Transactions on SegWit will be in the penny range as opposed to the previous $20-$30 range of many Bitcoin transactions.

The importance of SegWit support from Coinbase should not be under-estimated. This is a tremendously popular trading platform for Bitcoin. Coinbase's implementation of SegWit will spur on a network effect for its broader adoption. As SegWit is adopted by more exchanges, the problems of slow and expensive Bitcoin transactions will become a distant, unpleasant memory.

SegWit also enables new features in Bitcoin - most importantly the Lightning network, allowing for extremely fast and cheap transactions. This is a major victory for the progress of Bitcoin's scalability.

sources:

https://coinjournal.net/bitcoin-fees-decreasing-segwit/

https://twitter.com/coinbase?lang=en