Bitcoin’s fork, which was scheduled to take place on November 16, has been canceled.
Support for the fork simply faded. Criticisms came mostly from longtime developers. Interestingly, many of them still agreed on the idea of larger blocks, which the new protocol would have provided. But they felt bullied and didn’t like how the decision to fork was made – which was in an invitation-only meeting, by the way.
So, what’s next?
Bitcoin still needs to scale. Increasing block size was an obvious way to do it. But it’s not the only way. Other technological solutions will likely compete with larger block sizes as the way to move forward.
Whatever is decided in the future, greater attention will be paid to forming a consensus in all corners of the bitcoin community.
I want to make clear that we’re still big believers in bitcoin and maintain that it should make up 50% of your cryptocurrency portfolio.
We fully expect bitcoin to continue to be the dominant digital coin. After all, this wasn’t the first time something like this happened. Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin XT all proposed software upgrades and also failed to gain adoption.
Bitcoin’s price is slightly down this morning. Cancellation of the fork has eliminated uncertainty and should allow prices to continue to rise.
Thank you for your email inquiries regarding the fork. We’ll continue to keep you informed of further developments on this front.
Good investing,
Andy Gordon
Co-Founder, First Stage Investor