COINBASE PREPARES FOR A POSSIBLE HARD FORK SEGWIT2X 5 hours ago

As announced by the developer BitPico, the fork SegWit2X could well take place - after being officially canceled by the signatories of the New York Agreement.

Coinbase customers were surprised to realize that sending and receiving Bitcoins was temporarily disabled for a possible fork SegWit2x today:

The latest announcement of Coinbase abounds in the direction, and details the consequences related to a possible continuation of SegWit2x.

In fact, the price of the SegWit2x futures (SegWit2x futures contract) has risen by more than 50% over the last 24 hours.

The announcement of Coinbase

Here is the complete translation of the announcement made today on the blog Cornerbase by the director of communication, David Farmer:

David Farmer coinbaseMany events have appeared since our last announcement about SegWit2x.

Coinbase carefully monitors the situation, and will ensure that its customers benefit from this fork, if it leads to a secure and functional network. No action is needed, and all funds stored on Coinbase are safe.

Last week, the SegWit2x development team announced that it was putting an end to this project. In addition, a significant number of miners and other community leaders have stopped supporting this fork. However, despite these events, a small number of miners could attempt to provoke this fork.

We wanted to be clear about the potential outcomes of this fork, and what Coinbase will do for each of them.

In order to protect the funds of its customers, Coinbase will freeze the sending and reception of Bitcoin at 2 am Pacific time, this 17 November [note: 11 am in metropolitan France]. Coinbase will disable purchases and sales one hour before the fork, which should occur between 6 am and 8 am, Pacific time, November 17 [Editor's note: between 3 pm and 5 pm in France Metropolitan]. All features will be quickly reactivated.

First scenario: the network is unstable

If the support granted to this fork remains at the same levels as currently, or decreases, the Bitcoin2x network will be unusable. Coinbase will not support withdrawals or trading, as it will not be possible to move these assets. We think this is the most plausible scenario.

If the network then receives more support, we will enable Bitcoin2x withdrawals from the platform.

Second scenario: the network is stable

If the transactions are confirmed at a reasonable speed, and the support of minors is strong, we will allow customers of Coinbase to withdraw their Bitcoin2x. However, we will not immediately activate purchases and sales, as we previously announced, but we could activate them at a later date.

We assume that our customers should benefit from hard forks or other unexpected events in the best possible conditions. We have invested significant resources to ensure we are prepared for each scenario, and if a stable and functional network emerges, we will offer our clients access to their Bitcoin2x funds.

We continue to work on the implementation of Bitcoin Cash, and we are still preparing to implement it on January 1, 2018.