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Topic: [2017-8-25] Bitpay Addresses Last Week’s Controversial Segwit2x Blog Post (Read 356 times)

legendary
Activity: 3948
Merit: 3191
Leave no FUD unchallenged
if BitPay will treat 2x coin as real Bitcoin and recognize its price as the price of real Bitcoin, than they will open themselves to a "fork attack" - people who will split their coins will pay to them with 2x coin and will effectively double the value of their coins. This might be a huge loss for BitPay, since they will have less value than they are giving to their users in fiat, because exchange rates on open markets for 2x coin will be much lower than for the real Bitcoin. Sooner or later, even 2x supporters will have to recognize their chain as an altcoin.

Bold prognostications, but only time will tell.  I always hear the ideological arguments being presented in support of the "real" Bitcoin, but I seldom hear any economic argument and I think that might be causing the bias in your perspective.  What needs to be considered is, for the people out there who have businesses to run, or for the users who rely heavily on making frequent transactions, all those ideological arguments may not have a great deal of influence over their decision making process.  There are genuine use-cases and business interests to consider and BitPay just reiterated some of those.  Money talks, as does convenience.    

So, if there is an overwhelmingly significant proportion of hashrate following 2x, staying on the minority chain is the dead opposite of convenience.  It's entirely plausible that enough businesses and users will weigh up the pros and cons and arrive at the conclusion that fighting against the current to preserve an ideological standpoint (that not everyone feels as strongly about as you do) doesn't make sense when considering the economic cost to keep fighting.  It might not be the case that miners are "forcing" this decision upon a majority of people, it could simply be that there aren't enough people who care sufficiently about a 1MB blocksize to be in the majority anymore.  The majority are the economically relevant ones, so are you absolutely certain that's still you?

If a hard fork had happened far earlier in this debate, back when the idea of 20MB blocks was being evaluated and dissected, I'm certain you'd be quite accurate with your appraisal of the "real" Bitcoin vs the altcoin, but now that it's been whittled down to 2MB (and considering a larger blocksize will probably be a necessary requirement to support things like the Lightning Network in the not-too-distant future anyway) and because there now appears to be sufficient support to move forward, or at the very least, certainly less opposition than before, there is arguably a far greater chance of success now.  

The real question is, are you going to try doubling the value of your coins via the method outlined in your post, or is it just idle speculation from someone who ran out of ideological arguments to make?
sr. member
Activity: 276
Merit: 254
This situation is very interesting - if BitPay will treat 2x coin as real Bitcoin and recognize its price as the price of real Bitcoin, than they will open themselves to a "fork attack" - people who will split their coins will pay to them with 2x coin and will effectively double the value of their coins. This might be a huge loss for BitPay, since they will have less value than they are giving to their users in fiat, because exchange rates on open markets for 2x coin will be much lower than for the real Bitcoin. Sooner or later, even 2x supporters will have to recognize their chain as an altcoin.

You missing the bigger picture, NYA signers updating their Bitcoin software to be compatible with SegWit2x, not only BitPay. On the NYA list is Coinbase, plus most other exchanges agreed with SegWit2x if ready before Aug 1 to prevent BIP148 split, which happened. This means majority of Bitcoin ecosystem going to name Bitcoin the chain which is SegWit2x compatible, so no risk for them to any kind of attacks you describe. If there is any support for the old chain and it is still functional, there might be new altcoin though. Some suggested Bcore name for it, but it needs some serious miners support to be even functional - not under 1% which BIP148 folks could come up only with.
legendary
Activity: 3024
Merit: 2148
This situation is very interesting - if BitPay will treat 2x coin as real Bitcoin and recognize its price as the price of real Bitcoin, than they will open themselves to a "fork attack" - people who will split their coins will pay to them with 2x coin and will effectively double the value of their coins. This might be a huge loss for BitPay, since they will have less value than they are giving to their users in fiat, because exchange rates on open markets for 2x coin will be much lower than for the real Bitcoin. Sooner or later, even 2x supporters will have to recognize their chain as an altcoin.
member
Activity: 93
Merit: 10
On August 25 the largest global bitcoin payment processor, Bitpay, addressed the company’s controversial blog post on Segwit2x last week. The firm received a lot of backlash for advising Bitcore nodes to utilize the BTC1 (Segwit2x) software over the Core client. Now the company reveals why it gave instructions to use the BTC1 version of Bitcoin.

Last week Bitpay’s blog post stirred up a lot of controversy and many arguments between Segwit2x supporters and Core development supporters. Many bitcoin proponents and luminaries, asked people to boycott the startup, and even called the blog post “illegal” and “fraudulent.” Now the company is addressing the situation in a follow-up blog post called “Bitpay’s Perspective on Segwit2x.”

Read more here >>>  https://news.bitcoin.com/bitpay-addresses-last-weeks-controversial-segwit2x-blog-post/
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