Bitcoin Payment Suspension

Bitcoin was designed in 2009 and for some time has faced a scaling issue where the total volume of transactions that can happen on the blockchain at any one time is limited to a maximum of 1 megabyte (1MB) every 10 minutes. This has created a backlog of transactions, slower confirmation times and increased transaction fees. Because Bitcoin is a completely decentralized system with no CEO, CTO, or central company all technical or monetary governance has fallen upon the major network stakeholders such as miners, exchanges and wallet providers to determine consensus and evolve the Bitcoin protocol.

Over the past couple of years many scaling solutions have been proposed. One such proposal is BIP91 which introduces SegWit2X. SegWit2X is a compromise proposed and backed by a majority of miners where the Segregated Witness (SegWit) code optimization would be introduced into the Bitcoin protocol upon activation, followed by an increase in the network's block size from 1MB to 2MB (2X) about 90 days later. BIP91 has a lower threshold for adoption which has made its implementation more realistic and less risky. Adopting BIP91 also decreases the probability of a hard fork, something many people seem to believe is safer.

However, chaos hasn’t been entirely avoided as competing Bitcoin proposals are threatening to split off the main chain. These proposals include Bitcoin Cash (BCC) and BIP 148 (UASF). At this time it is unclear how much miner support and hash power these new chains will take with them and what impact they will have on the stability of the Bitcoin network as a whole. Futhermore, with only four days remaining before the required July 31st lock in, it is still uncertain if more than 51% of miners, required for full network adoption, will actually implement BIP91.