GBMiners: We Haven’t Pulled Out of the SegWit2x Agreement
GBMiners, India’s largest bitcoin mining pool operator, has clarified that the company has not pulled out from the SegWit2x (NYA) agreement.
Earlier this week, CCN.com reported that Litecoin creator and former Coinbase executive Charlie Lee revealed GBMiners stopped signaling for the SegWit2x hard fork expected to occur in November.
On October 28, the GBMiners team explained that its mining pool briefly stopped signaling for SegWit2x because it had been testing for a few upgrades. The team stated:
“We are testing for [a] few upgrades. We haven’t pulled out of NYA.”
Significance of GBMiners
After all, GBMiners only accounts for a small percentage of the global bitcoin hashrate at around 2.5 percent. Other major mining pools like F2Pool, which accounts for a staggering 14 percent of the bitcoin hashrate has pulled out of the SegWIt2x agreement.
Hence, whether GBMiners pulls out of the SegWit2x agreement or stays within the agreement does not hugely impact both SegWit2x supporters or the users of the original bitcoin blockchain.
It is more important for the global bitcoin community to speculate the options of leading mining pools like Antpool, BitFury, and BTCC, as only those three pools apart from F2Pool and Slush can actually threaten the SegWit2x hard fork proposal.
In late August, BTCC CEO Bobby Lee and Bitfury said in an interview that they intend to remain as strong supporters of the SegWit2x hard fork in November. Lee stated :
“We are strong supporters of the New York Agreement (Segwit2X). We support scaling bitcoin and doing so responsibly. We hope that the hard fork part of Segwit2X will also be upheld.”
BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov added:
“The initial agreement for SegWit2x has not changed.”
What Will Happen to SegWit2x?
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was forked in August with minimal support from the community and from miners. Although the project was only supported by ViaBTC and Bitmain–even Bitmain was caught off guard with the announcement of ViaBTC to pursue Bitcoin Cash–it did eventually fork and create a new cryptocurrency in BCH.
Hence, even if several mining pools like F2Pool pull out of the SegWit2x agreement, remaining miners such as BitFury and BTCC would likely lead the proposal and executive the hard fork on November 16, as planned.
Upon the completion of the hard fork, given the declining support from the industry, community, and miners, there exists a high probability that the SegWit2x blockchain will become the minority chain and be listed as either B2X or BC1, depending on independent exchanges and wallet platforms. Xapo and Blockchain have opted to list SegWit2x as BC1, while Bitfinex, Coinbase, and Bittrex have disclosed their intentions to name the cryptocurrency B2X.
It is also important to note that the hash power of pools that either have pulled out of the agreement of have given miners to choose to support a certain chain have increased massively in the past week.
https://twitter.com/iamjosephyoung/status/923881027788988416
Featured image from Shutterstock.
