Bitcoin will be upgraded on August 1st Only hold BTC worth you can afford to lose. (See how to protect your BTC)
Under Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 148, Bitcoin will be undergoing a user activated soft fork on August 1, 2017
They want to activate UASF(user activated soft fork)
A lot of questions about August 1st
I'll try to explain this and keep it as simple as possible
To be clear, if the UASF activation date is August 1st, then what will happen is as follows:
Oh, let's talk about what uasf us in the first place
UASF stands for User Activated Soft Fork. It’s a mechanism where the activation time of a soft fork occurs on a specified date enforced by full nodes, a concept sometimes referred to as the economic majority.
On the other hand is MASF
MASF stands for Miner Activated Soft Fork. It’s a mechanism by which miners trigger activation of soft forks when a majority signals the readiness to upgrade.
Now, there's BIP 148
BIP148 is a UASF that is designed to cause the existing SegWit MASF deployment to cause activation in all existing SegWit capable node software (which currently is 80% of the network nodes)
How does BIP148 Work? From August 1st, 2017, miners are required to signal readiness for SegWit by creating blocks with the version bit 1. This will cause all SegWit ready nodes, which make up over 80% of the network, to activate and begin enforcement
To be clear, BIP 148 isn't a hard fork
Let me just skip to how this may affect ur bitcoin then
Instead of all this grammar lol
If a majority of miners (by hash power) does not signal support for SegWit on August 1st, but at least some do, Bitcoin's blockchain will split in two.
In that case, there would be two types of Bitcoin tokens
That's 2 different coins
I'll refer to them as "BTC 1" for coins on the soft forked chain, and "BTC 2" for coins on the chain that did not activate the soft fork.
Now
The good news is that each bitcoin would effectively be copied to both chains. If you hold bitcoin right now, you will hold both BTC 1 and BTC 2 after the split
Eg
If you have 1 BTC now, you'll have 1 BTC ONE and 1 BTC TWO.
===================================================================================
So, 1 BTC each for each blockchain
The bad news is that this coin-split can be messy and risky. And if you're not careful, you could lose funds.
So, how do u make sure u r safe before then?
Before August 1
First off, be aware that a chain-split create a high-risk situation. There is a chance that some sort of cyber-battle will break out between the two camps, perhaps even escalating to the point where bitcoin's exchange rate(s) drops sharply, possibly to zero. Make absolutely sure you are not holding more value in bitcoin than what you are willing to lose.
Change some of your BTC to USDT And hold
Or even naira(nigeria currency)
It might get messy
If you do decide to hold onto your bitcoins, the single most important piece of advice is this: Ensure that you control your own private keys.
If you are storing your bitcoins on an exchange, in a custodial wallet like Luno, Coinbase, Circle or Xapo, or on any other service that holds your private keys for you, you may or may not eventually receive coins on both ends of the chain. In fact, if these kinds of services aren't well-prepared, there could be scenarios where you don't get any coins at all. So far, no exchanges have given any kind of guarantee.
So if you're using any of these kinds of services to store your bitcoins, you need to create your own wallet . Send your bitcoins to one or several Bitcoin addresses in this new wallet. This wallet now holds your private keys.
Converting to alts is also an option
But also very risky
Best bet in my opinion if you don't want naira is USDT
As it stores your value as is
Only RSK can help bitcoin now
Here's how it works
If you convert $2000 of BTC to USDT, it's gonna remain $2000
No matter what the price of BTC is
The problem here is that we do not know what exchanges like poloniex would do
If you now want to convert back to BTC
I predict a downward trend in BTC from the days leading to August 1
As people panic and hurry to convert their BTC into Fiat
===================================================================================
In conclusion to avoid story that touch or losing your BTC,
Holliday of bitcointalk said "If you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins."
Centralized wallet is wallet where you don't have full access over your bitcoin (no private key), but usually they offer service such as instant sell/buy bitcoin, bitcoin credit card or no transaction fee. (Example : Coinbase and Xapo)
Decentralized wallet is wallet where you have full access over your bitcoin (you get private key), but without much service because it's decentralized. (Example : Hardware wallets(Trezor), Electrum and Mycelium).
Trezor is the best Bitcoin hardware wallet (Paid).
Mycelium is the best bitcoin mobile wallet (Free).
Electrum is the best bitcoin desktop wallet (Free).
Copied From Facebook :-/