Bitfinex Rolls Out SegWit Support to Minimize BTC Withdrawal Fees

To tackle the rising network fees of Bitcoins transaction, Bitfinex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, has announced the integration of P2SH Segregated Witness (SegWit) support to its Bitcoin wallet addresses.

Discover credible partners and premium clients at China’s leading finance event!

The exchange has been working on the integration for a while, and today finally announced the public rollout of the service. With this move, clients of the exchange will enjoy much lower BTC withdrawal fees (approximately 15%).

Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, said: “As a premier exchange, Bitfinex is committed to improving its market-leading offering for our loyal and discerning customers. SegWit provides not only an immediate benefit for users, but also a foundation for future Bitcoin development. By supporting this, Bitfinex is tackling three of the biggest crypto-enthusiast concerns: transaction fees, transaction speed, and total network capacity. We are delighted that through this implementation we can provide our customers with bitcoin withdrawal fees that are up to 20 percent lower, as well as faster-than-ever transaction speeds.”

Bitfinex is not the only crypto exchange with SegWit support, as US-based Coinbase had already provided its users with wallets that support the upgrade. However, Coinbase received a lot of criticism from users claiming that they had lost their funds as the exchange was sending them to “random legacy addresses” instead of the appropriate SegWit ones.

Apart from the exchanges, popular wallet platforms are also working on SegWit integration – multi-currency mobile wallet app Mobi being the most recent.

Bitfinex to EOSfinex

Along with the SegWit integration, Bitfinex also revealed a new platform, called EOSfinex, on which it is working with the blockchain firm EOS.IO.

With this, the goal of the exchange is to provide a much faster platform by combining the scalability and speed achieved by EOS.IO with the existing ‘on chain’ exchange platform.

“We are excited to leverage EOS.io to further advance the field of high performance and trustless on-chain exchange. Block.one continues to display an unwavering dedication to improving blockchain scalability through the EOS.IO platform and it is our hope that this collaboration will allow significant advancement for all decentralized exchange. Our experience indicates that these advancements represent fundamentally transformative capabilities for the blockchain industry, and Bitfinex remains dedicated to leveraging the latest innovations to continue offering the world’s leading trading experience,” commented J.L. van der Velde, Bitfinex CEO.