Segwit2x and Why you should hodl!

Deer Steemit Friends,

Segwit2x is probably not the end of the world. Yea, I said it. Risky. What do I know? Very little about the future. But this is just a possibility and I believe the chances of chaos is very very low. Here’s why.

• The majority of Bitcoin miners have every incentive to conform and little incentive to rebel

The success of Bitcoin results in the success of Bitcoin miners. These miners have invested in Bitcoin mining rigs and probably also own Bitcoin. If Bitcoin fails, they’d have to reconfigure their rigs for another cryptocurrency and their Bitcoins lose value. If Bitcoin succeeds, their rigs continue chugging along and their Bitcoins maintain/gain value.

• Segregated Witness is a tried and true technology

If Segregated Witness was a new and untried technology, I’d be more wary of Segwit2x just because of potential undetected flaws in the tech. However, the technology is definitely not new nor untested. Segregated Witness was implemented by Litecoin and has been running on Litecoin’s network for a couple months now with no issues.

Segregated Witness works and it’ll be a dramatic improvement for Bitcoin.

• Ethereum survived the DAO hardfork

When Ethereum launched a hard fork in defiance of hackers siphoning millions of dollars from the DAO through a software bug, Ethereum’s blockchain split and the original chain became it’s own cryptocurrency (aka Ethereum Classic). As of right now, Ethereum Classic is the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market cap ($1.319 billion).

Right after Ethereum’s hard fork, an Ether was worth $10 USD. Today, an Ether is worth $150 USD. Ethereum not only survived the hard fork, it proceeded to thrive in the months to come. If Ethereum survived a hard fork, Bitcoin can too, even if a legacy Bitcoin blockchain chain continued to exist.

• Segwit2x greatly improves Bitcoin

Going back to Ethereum’s hardfork, we see that the circumstances surrounding Segwit2x favours Bitcoin’s survival much more than the circumstances surrounding Ethereum’s hardfork.

Ethereum was hard forked to save a poorly coded smart contract program, while Bitcoin is being hard forked to significantly improve the platform. There were ethical questions surrounding the Ethereum dev team’s decision to unilaterally intervene, whereas everyone agrees Bitcoin’s current transaction throughput sucks and needs drastic improvement.

It’s much easier to get behind Bitcoin’s hard fork than Ethereum’s, yet Ethereum not only survived, but thrived post-hard-fork.

• Cryptocurrency vloggers agree

I’ve also been watching a few cryptocurrency vloggers (Boxmining, TheChartGuys, CryptoBud, etc.) to gauge their opinions on Segwit2x. Several of them believe the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) surrounding the event is overblown and some have even compared August 1st to Y2K. Remember how Y2K turned out to be such a big nothing burger? Segwit2x will probably turn out the same.

Not the end of the world!

In conclusion, I don’t think Segwit2x is as bad as some in the community makes it out to be. All this selling is probably overcompensating for the risks involved and this might just be one big bear trap. Perhaps it’s even time to get greedy and go on a shopping spree?