The extremely contentious upcoming hard fork of Bitcoin was called off today, in a statement signed by the main proponents of the fork, Mike Belshe, Wences Casares, Jihan Wu, Jeff Garzik, Peter Smith and Erik Voorhees.
The statement reads:
"The Segwit2x effort began in May with a simple purpose: to increase the blocksize and improve Bitcoin scalability. At the time, the Bitcoin community was in crisis after nearly 3 years of heavy debate, and consensus for Segwit seemed like a distant mirage with only 30% support among miners. Segwit2x found its first success in August, as it broke the deadlock and
quickly led to Segwit’s successful activation. Since that time, the team shifted its efforts to phase two of the project - a 2MB blocksize increase.
Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together. Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for
a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x.
As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade.
We want to thank everyone that contributed constructively to Segwit2x, whether you were in favor or against. Your efforts are what makes Bitcoin great. Bitcoin remains the greatest form of money mankind has ever seen, and we remain dedicated to protecting and fostering its growth worldwide."
Twitter exploded with praise and relief at the news, and the price of Bitcoin launched to a hair under $7777, according to Coinmarketcap.
Many other altcoins popped much higher as money earmarked or otherwise waiting for the Bitcoin chainsplit was put to work. Interestingly, it was not a zero-sum gain for either Bitcoin or the altcoins at the expense of the other: most everything launched higher, probably purely held back by uncertainty in general. This was the first time a hard fork was to be implemented without replay protection, meaning there was no intention or plans in place to distinguish transactions spent on the new chain from the old, which had the potential to be very complicated and disruptive to both.
In other news, the CME released Contract Specifications for its newly-announced Bitcoin Futures, which many expect to fuel further explosive growth of Bitcoin (and by extension cryptocurrencies in general) by legitimizing and making them accessible to institutional investors and eventually much broader markets through ETFs and other derivatives.
This is an exciting time in an entirely new world.