Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has reaffirmed its intention to provide support for both Bitcoin blockchains following the SegWit2x hard fork in November. Significantly, the forked blockchain will be listed as Bitcoin2x under the B2X ticker symbol.
Coinbase to List Forked Chain as ‘Bitcoin2x’
Coinbase made the announcement in a blog post, bringing clarity to how it plans to handle the contentious SegWit2x hard fork that will likely result in a blockchain split. Earlier this month, Coinbase had announced that it will support both blockchains, but it did not reveal its naming scheme for the two chains — both of which claim to be “Bitcoin”.
Coinbase is a signatory to the New York Agreement (NYA) — the proposal that put SegWit2x activation into motion — so many people speculated that, like other NYA signatories, Coinbase would delegate the “Bitcoin” label and “BTC” ticker to the chain with the most accumulated difficulty (indicating more miner support), which proponents believe will be the SegWit2x chain.
However, the company — which also operates order-book exchange GDAX — will instead continue to list the incumbent blockchain as Bitcoin under the BTC ticker, while the forked blockchain will be labeled “Bitcoin2x” under the ticker “B2X”. That said, the company also published a SegWit2x FAQ in which it stated that it may decide to rename the blockchains in the future if “the SegWit2x change is accepted by most users.”
“This is the nail in the coffin for [SegWit2x],” Blockchain Capital’s Spencer Bogart wrote on Twitter,” implying that the forked blockchain will not succeed if exchanges and services list it as a de fact altcoin rather than “Bitcoin”.
No Support for Bitcoin Gold
Coinbase also announced that the company does not currently have plans to support Bitcoin Gold, a soon-to-launch altcoin that will share a blockchain history with bitcoin. Citing concerns about security and stability, Coinbase stated it will reconsider its decision in the future if the cryptocurrency proves to be both valuable and secure.
In that event, the company will credit users with Bitcoin Gold equal to their bitcoin balances at the time of the blockchain snapshot, which took place Tuesday morning.