The Countdown to the Soft Fork Has Been Launched: Cryptopay Is Ready
Hey, remember the heated Hard Fork debates that took place two months ago? They're happening again and now they're serious.
On August 1st, the endgame phase of the SegWit adoption battle will be taking place and Bitcoin community should decide how the currency will evolve. It’ll be an appropriate time for Cryptopay to share an official position on the matter.
What's happening?
Simply, Soft Fork is an update of the existing Bitcoin protocol in order to improve the effectiveness of transactions and the general network. Unlike Hard Fork, it won't necessarily lead to a mandatory split of the cryptocurrency.
Two months ago, when the Bitcoin network was under a massive DDoS attack, a group of miners proposed to extend the standard 1Mb block by eight in order to increase the network capacity. The offer was rejected by the majority of the community and instead, they signaled a warmer attitude to the Segregated Witness (SegWit) adaptation.
SegWit stands for the technological update to the classic BTC protocol. The two adoption scenarios currently available for the support of the community are as followed:
- BIP 141 (Segregated Witness) — This update excludes a lot of metadata from 1Mb block and in theory helps increase it by including more transaction data.
- SegWit2x (Intention) — Is mostly the same, meanwhile increasing the standard block size by 2Mb and not backwards compatible.
As you can see by the graph above, over 98% of nodes are signaling BIP 141 and this will likely be the scenario. However, almost 50% of nodes that support BIP 141 are still signaling a "prepared" status instead of a "support" status. This means they could potentially change their mind by August 1st.
Is there any danger to Cryptopay users?
Not really, as with most Bitcoin-affiliated platforms, we're going to suspend all Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on July 31st at 23:00 hrs UTC and we will reactivate deposits and withdrawals when the switch is completed.
This would not affect Cryptopay users or their accounts in any other way.
What should I do to protect myself?
The main problem you may encounter is the unavailability of Cryptopay BTC deposits during the soft fork procedure and also for some time after it. This is done just in case the community should roll back to the original Bitcoin.
We'll do everything to ensure your funds will remain secure, as a Cryptopay user you can relax and won't have to take any actions to protect yourself. We’ll have everything under control. However, if you're still feeling insecure about your money, the availability of deposits/withdrawals, and so on, you could use two backup scenarios:
- Withdraw all Bitcoins before the 31st of July
-or-
- Initiate the BTC/FIAT exchange. Fiat currencies like USD or EUR will not be affected by the fork, which makes it a good contagious scenario.
Would Bitcoin Cash be supported?
The worst case scenario assumes the Bitcoin will be split by the two competitive currencies (hard fork), but again there's no reason to panic — in this case, each Bitcoin holder will get his/her tokens or coins of the other currency in the split designated network that would have nothing to do with the original Bitcoin from there on.
If the new currency is widely supported by the community this means it would gain higher market value and we will add it to the list of supported currencies alongside Bitcoin. It all depends on how the situation plays out.
Now we can confirm that your Bitcoins are in a safe place and Cryptopay wouldn't take any actions before assuring their total consistency. Fork or not.
