Chili’s SurBTC Exchange Backs out of SegWit2x Support

The SegWit2x hard fork remains a topic of substantial debate. Very few companies will continue their initial support for this solution. Another exchange has withdrawn its initial support, by the look of things. Chili’s SurBTC platform is now backing out of the New York Agreement. It is evident this is not the final company to do so. Before the fork happens, things will look very different compared to what we know today.

SurBTC is a very important Bitcoin exchange in Latin America. Chili is one of the multiple countries dealing with financial hardship. A lot of consumers and even businesses show a great interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency right now. However, the startup is also an initial supporter of SegWit2x. Past tense is warranted in this regard, as the company is rethinking its initial stance. More specifically, they have officially backed out of SegWit2x altogether.

SurBTC Drops Support for SegWit2x Trading

As we have seen with other companies taking a similar approach, there is a good reason. While SurBTC acknowledged SegWit is an important milestone for Bitcoin, the block size increase is not. In fact, the company sides with Bitcoin Core in this regard, which is not entirely surprising. Other companies and mining pools have done so as well over the past few weeks. Rest assured we will see more of these statements as the fork deadline draws closer.

SurBTC comments on their decision as follows:

“Even though we would be happy to have moderately larger blocks to accommodate growing demand, we feel that Bitcoin needs (at least a majority) of bitcoin’s core developers’ support in order to do this responsibly. We haven’t seen this support and we don’t like what we currently see on the btc1 code repository in terms of technical considerations and open source collaboration.”

Do keep in mind the company will credit B2x balances to Bitcoin users. Moreover, they will allow coin withdrawals for this fork as well. Trading, on the other hand, will not happen on this platform. It is expected a few other exchanges will decide not to allow B2X trading as well. The future isn’t looking great for this scaling solution, that much is certain. Any company refusing to drop SegWit2x support will be officially scrutinized starting tomorrow. This will be a pretty interesting event to keep an eye on, to say the least.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock