Many Bitcoin users and fans have recently been concerned with the question: what will happen to Bitcoin on August 1st, 2017?
Below you will find a summary of possible answers about Bitcoin before and after August 1st.
This story started about two years ago, as at that time it was noticed that the Bitcoin transaction protocol has a problem that will be a quick solution. The problem involved a "bottleneck" in the Bitcoin Transaction Protocol.
Transaction processing number programmed by "Nakamato" was 7 transactions per second, but in practice this number ranges from 4-6 transactions per second and with increasing number of users and growing transactions, many experts in this field are committed to finding a solution acceptable to all parties.
Following the agreement in February 2016, known as the "Hong Kong Agreement" and an additional agreement in May 2017 known as "New York Agreement", two nominations have been reached in the final, one known SEGWIT (Segregated Witnesess) and the other BU (Bitcoin Unlimited).
With the New York agreement SEGWIT finds more support and September 2017 is designated as the last time for implementation.
Bitcoin's SEGWIT protocol from the currently 1MB block removes some additional information (transaction signatures) and processes them separately with a sub-block , in this way the block's capacity is released for 20% and this would be a viable solution. This variant found more support for the Bitcoin community and Exchange platforms.
The Bitcoin Protocol according to the BU (Bitcoin Unlimited) system as a solution proposes to increase the block as needed, so the block would be flexible, as the number of transactions would increase would also increase the block, this way it found more support from minning China's dominant pools.
The contradictions and interests of the two above mentioned groups were so deep that the idea of dividing Bitcoin was also expressed.
As a solution between Jeff Garzik (Bitcoin Core Developer) came a proposal named SEGWITx2 which took into consideration the interests of both SEGWIT and BU groups (block increment from 1MB to 2MB)
SEGWITx2 has to go through several phases but two are the most important, the first phase or transition to SEGWIT is applied on August 1st and the second phase increments the block from 1MB to 2MB, a phase that applies after 90 days or on November 1st, 2017 The application of the first stage is known as softfork, while the application of the second phase is known as the "hardfork".
The SEGWIT testing protocol was launched on 23 July 2017 and you have probably noticed that this week the number of "pending" transactions was too small, so SEGWIT is doing its job successfully. This week the number of SEGWITx2 supporters has exceeded 95% and trust in SEGWIT has increased, as a result today we have a BTC price increase.
Now that only three days remain until the full implementation of SEGWIT has emerged a new opposition from a small group, Chinese "ViaBTC" company, which has repeatedly opposed the SEGWIT protocol.
ViaBTC is a new exchange and mining pool, for the moment this company has about 4% of the Bitcoin's hashing power. This company has been warning a long time ago that it will not support SEGWIT and has created a Bitcoin version protocol called "Bitcoin Cash" BCC
This protocol has the 8MB block and is expected to be split by SEGWIT on August 1, so Bitcoin will still not get rid of the partition. How much will there be support for this protocol from the Bitcoin community will be seen in the future, but one thing is clear, this group is determined and has processing power to continue evenalone.
If the BCC does not have enough support from the Bitcoin community, then BCC will be the next altcoin of ViaBTC.
On their platform they have already begun trading with the new BCC currency and the price is not small at all.
Everyone who today owns BTC after August 1s, 2017 can practically have even the same BCCs with the only condition that besides the "public key" they also possess a "private key".
Bitcoin's public key is the 34-character code that we know as a Bitcoin wallet, while the private key is a private key that unfortunately very few of us have. To have a private key you should use the Hardware Wallet, Paper Wallet, Desktop Wallet or Bitcoin Core Wallet.
For BTCs that we have in our Online Wallet, Wallet or Mobile Wallet, we do not own a private key, as they are mostly stored on platform servers.
What before and after August 1st?
Most experts have recommended avoiding transactions in large amounts by July 31 and August 1 until the new updated protocol is proved, personally not expecting any problems or complications.
Starting from the experience we have with Litecoin, if SEGWIT in the early days is proven stable, then BTC may change in value-price, as many investors have been afraid of all this fog that has long held, however this remains to be seen in the near future.
We hope that BTC will overcome this challenge without any problems, comments and suggestions are welcome.