Coinbase Updates Users on The Potential Bitcoin Segwit2x Fork
Last week, the Segwit2x development team announced they would no longer continue with the project. In addition, a significant portion of miners and other community leaders withdrew their support for the fork. However, despite these developments, a small number of miners may attempt to go forward with the fork. In an attempt to provide clarity about the potential outcomes of the fork, Coinbase released an announcement explaining how the company intends to deal with the potential fork. The announcement reads:
"To protect customer funds, Coinbase will disable Bitcoin sends and receives at 2 am Pacific Time on November 17th, and disable buys and sells an hour before the fork, which is currently predicted to occur between 6am to 8am Pacific Time on November 17th. All functionality will be re-enabled shortly afterwards."
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Researchers Are Developing Bitcoin's Lightning Network
Researchers Conrad Burchert and Roger Wattenhofer and Blockstream engineer Christian Decker are putting new effort into developing Bitcoin's Lightning Network. They have proposed a more scalable version of the payments channel scheme, believed by developers to be the best way to expand Bitcoin in order to accommodate more users. Bitcoin's "layer two", Lightning, hasn't yet been pushed live onto the Bitcoin blockchain, but proponents of the idea see it as a way to boost Bitcoin's transaction capacity without increasing the block size.
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BitMEX is Dumping Bitcoin Cash and Crediting Users With Bitcoin
The Hong Kong-based Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX) has announced it will sell all the customers’ airdropped Bitcoin Cash balances and distribute the proceeds in Bitcoin.
The exchange made the announcement on Wednesday, explaining that because Bitcoin Cash was created through a “contentious hard fork” it will not allow users who received BCH to withdraw the coins to their personal wallets. The announcement reads:
“BitMEX does not agree with contentious hard forks, and does not accept the manner in which Bitcoin Cash was forked, or the lack of preparation or notice before the fork. We consider this a dangerous action that imposes unacceptable costs on end-users and businesses.”
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Swiss Firms to Let Traders Short Bitcoin With New Futures Products
Swiss asset management firm Vontobel will launch a new futures product designed to let customers bet against the price of Bitcoin. The offering will enable investors to reap gains even if the Bitcoin price plunges. According to Reuters, the company will release two mini futures, a type of derivatives instrument that represents a fraction of the value of standard futures.
Eric Blattmann, Head of Public Distribution of Financial Products at Vontobel, said that the news comes at a time when traditional traders are simply looking for more options when it comes to trading cryptocurrencies. He stated:
"We have seen big demand for our long tracker certificate from investors interested in playing the upside potential of bitcoin and now they have also the possibility to hedge their position or go short."
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