Bitcoin is a crypto-currency which leverages the Blockchain. Similar to a real currency, Bitcoin is hailed as a revolutionary technology for storing value. It’s popularity stems from distrust in real world currencies, the un-regulated printing of currencies like the US Dollar.
Bitcoin is governed by “developers” and infrastructure. Crypto Miners who facilitate the transactions within the Bitcoin ecosystem have a shared consensus to regulate and evolve the Bitcoin economy. Bitcoin has governed parameters which include a limit on quantity, blocksize and others.
Today, the Bitcoin community seeks to evolve Bitcoin with agreed changes. Segwit2x, also known as the New York Agreement, is an industry-wide compromise that CEO and founder of Digital Currency Group Barry Silbert spearheaded in May to activate the Segregated Witness (Segwit) scaling upgrade for Bitcoin. Key mining pools and exchanges that agreed to the aforementioned plan include Bitmain’s Antpool, Btc.top, Bixin, Btcc Pool, F2pool, Huobi, Okcoin, Viabtc, BW, 1Hash, Canoe, Batpool, and Bitkan.
The event and announcement closely follow Bitmain’s release of its hard fork protection plan against UASF BIP148, which CEO Jihan Wu has described as an attack on Bitcoin. He spoke at the Summit on June 14 about how to prevent BIP148 from activating, outlining its weaknesses.
China owns ~80% of Bitcoin mining infrastructure and typically plays a dominant role in the future of Bitcoin.
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