Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Gatecoin has announced that will not support the upcoming SegWit2x (B2X) hard fork in November.
The exchange cited the lack of two-way transaction replay attack protection as the key reason behind its decision. It clarified that in the event of the SegWit2x (B2X) hard fork, it will not distribute any B2X to its clients, not process any B2X sent to its bitcoin wallet addresses, and not list any B2X coin on its exchange.
SegWit2x was proposed to tackle the bitcoin scaling problem in May this year. Bitcoin Magazine explains that a fork of the Bitcoin Core software client was being developed under the name “BTC1” based on the New York Agreement or “SegWit2x.”
At block 494,784 (expected sometime in November), the B2X software will activate on bitcoin clients running version BTC1, making BTC1 clients incompatible with all other bitcoin clients that are not running the B2X code. Gatecoin noted that the proposal has been criticized by Bitcoin Core, which cites the lack of replay attack protection as a major concern.
“As there has been widespread rejection of the B2X proposal there will very likely be a chain split or hard fork, as was the case with the Bcash hard fork in August,” it added.
Gatecoin further said that clients hoping to claim B2X coins equivalent to their bitcoin holdings at the time of the hard fork will need to withdraw their bitcoin from its exchange 12 hours before the fork occurs. It added:
“We will however be running B2X nodes in case the software’s developers decide to add replay attack protection in the future.”
