Bitcoin August 1st, What Will Be Happen to it?

What could we anticipate on August 1st for Bitcoin? What cautions we should do before it. Is it about to self destruct or re-powering?

As you probably know Bitcoin is about to activate soft fork on August 1st 2017. Two scenarios are probable: BIP 148 and SegWit2x. The two proposals are similar that they both intend to activate the Segregated Witness (SegWit) improvement.

In a worst case the BIP 148 could course Bitcoin to split into two separate blockchains, one with SegWit activated and one without. In this case more than 50 percent of the network will be a chain split. But SegWit is a soft-fork and the chain not signaling for BIP 148 could be reorganized into the BIP 148 chain if a majority of the network hashrate decides to support the BIP 148 chain at a later date or time.

SegWit2x
This proposal if activated 80 percent of miners will attempt a hard fork increase the block size limit to 2MB at a later date. So more than 80 percent of the network miners signed an agreement to run SegWit2x code.

How to make SegWit2x Compatible with BIP 148

At least over short term, they should attempt to activate SegWit at different times. If BIP 148 activates before SegWit2x, then there could be an attempted activation of SegWit without majority support from miners and that could be a chain split.

The risk and threat of a split
A key issue is that if SegWit2x will attempt a hard-fork increase to the base block size limit, unlike a soft fork, it is not backwards compatible and will cause a chain split. So the split of the Bitcoin community into two separate cryptocurrency networks is possible. A similar situation after the Ethereum network attempted a hard fork to bail out DAO token holders. There are now two Ethereum networks, known as Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

Hamidreza Asgari
June 18, 2017