Hi all,

Bitcoin 2x hardfork is coming and this is going to take place at block 494,784. Current block at writing is 491,665.

We have seen many forks so what’s so special about this fork. Lets understand the 2 concepts first: Segwit2x and New York Agreement (‘NYA’)

Segwit2x

“2X” refers to the second half of the “SegWit2x” roadmap, planned under the “New York Agreement” (NYA) that led major bitcoin businesses to finally support SegWit.

Since the 2X part of the agreement involve larger block size and a hard fork. There are some opposition which include Bitcoin Core developers, who were not part of the NYA.

NYA

The first stage regards deployment of SegWit was completed on 1st Aug. The second stage concerns the deployment of the hard fork itself, which is not backwards compatible with older Bitcoin clients.

This hard fork would double Bitcoin’s “base block size limit” to two megabytes, which combined with the block size limit increase brought by Segregated Witness should make for a total maximum of eight megabytes of block space. This is scheduled for approximately three months after activation of the first stage. The second stage should go into effect before November 1, 2017 or at block 494,784

Hardfork date: This is 3,119 blocks away, approximately 31190 minutes; which is approximately 21 days (3 weeks) away. Expected hardfork date should be on 15Nov17.

Attached is the comparison table extracted

Our view and concerns:

Bitcoin 2x is a significant hardfork unlike recent bitcoin gold hardfork on 25thOct17 which we see as a useless hardfork for specific lightning ASIC miners group to get extra monetary benefits.

Notwithstanding, there are some major concerns on bitcoin segwit2x:

No announcement on default replay protection: Replay protection is fundamentally important to ensure orginal bitcoin owners before the hardfork would not lose their bitcoin when transferring bitcoin. This security feature if missing is a major concern.

Reactions has been mixed showing disunity of the bitcoin community. Bitcoin.org has threatened to publicly denounce companies that support SegWit2x and have not committed to treating the competing blockchains as separate cryptocurrencies in the event of a chain split. The announcement goes on to list 50 companies it will denounce by name unless they comply with certain demands, including prominent names such as Coinbase, BitPay, bitFlyer, Xapo, and ShapeShift.

Notwithstanding, Coinbase has also announced it will support Segwit 2x hardfork, which is encouraging as we seen that they have not shown support for previous bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold hardfork.

https://blog.coinbase.com/timeline-and-support-bitcoin-segwit2x-and-bitcoin-gold-eda72525efd

The above scenario shows that individual group continues to support bitcoin development if and only if it work in their favor which is a roadblock for bitcoin to become a payment currency.

Our prediction

We may eventually see 2 dominant versions of bitcoin in the long run

The first and original BTC as a store of value and to receive future hard forks from original bitcoin chain.

The subsequent hardfork (whether BCC or Bitcoin2x or subsequent hardfork) as future official bitcoin payment currency.

Eventually only these 2 type of digital currencies on btc blockchain should be worth buying.

Trading recommendations:

Bitcoin is still undergoing massive development it make sense to just hold and buy bitcoin before the hardfork date.

However, post hard fork date, it may be difficult to say if original BTC price would still remain high above USD5k, as we note B2x is a serious competitor to original BTC. Thus we expect BTC prices see some correction during 2nd half of November post B2x hardfork.