EDIT: Last minute news: Segwit2X hard fork is officially cancelled.
The cancellation was announced on Thursday evening by Mike Belshe, the CEO and co-founder of Bitgo. He was one of the leaders of the scaling proposal and he argued the cancellation to be the best option for the whole community. The announcement was signed by several influential supporters of the fork including Jihan Wu.
You can read the announcement here.
Coinmotion policy with the fork
The next bitcoin hard fork is due to happen on block 494784 which is currently estimated to occur on November 16. After this block bitcoin will fork in two chains: the bitcoin (BTC) chain and Segwit2X (B2X) chain. Compared to earlier forks this one is a little trickier. Creators of Segwit2X refused to build a replay protection into the fork. We consider this highly irresponsible, however we have to take it into account. This does not risk bitcoin transfers but it does risk B2X tokens moving unwantedly.
After the fork there will be two chains, BTC and B2X. When replay protection isn’t activated transferring funds in one chain will also transfer the funds in the other. If Matt transfers 1 BTC to Lisa, with a very high probability, Matt will also simultaneously send 1 B2X to Lisa. Due to this problem we will have to stop bitcoin withdrawals for some time after the fork until we have successfully split the tokens and can choose which tokens to transfer.
BTC withdraws from Coinmotion will be disabled a few hours before the fork and for an unspecified amount of time after the fork. Our estimate for the withdraw closure is 24 to 48 hours from the fork block. Bitcoin deposits may still be allowed, although we reserve the right to close them as well if required for security. Our goal is to keep BTC trading operational at all times during the fork and after the fork, however we can’t guarantee this. EUR transfers will not be affected in any way by the fork.
Our default procedure in handling the fork tokens stays the same as with earlier forks. The default option is that we pay the value of the fork tokens in bitcoins (BTC) at a later date. By latest the date for the payments will be January 2018. If you wish to have the B2X tokens instead of BTC conversion, you can choose this option as well. We will publish a form for this two weeks prior to delivery of the funds in Coinmotion. In the form you can give your B2X wallet address into which you want your coins to be sent. We will announce the details for the redeeming of the fork tokens at a later date.
Currently we remain highly sceptical of the long term viability of the B2X chain. We recommend reading this article to learn more about Segwit2X. However if B2X chain gains major value and usage after the fork, we will consider adding full support for the chain to our service.
