On February 21, 2016, popular bitcoin wallet platform and vault solutions provider Xapo CEO Wences Casares announced that the company is planning to upgrade to Bitcoin Classic, with a vision to help the Bitcoin network scale efficiently.
Xapo is planning to upgrade to Classic. We’re committed to helping bitcoin scale and to supporting the initiatives that can take us there.
— Wences Casares (@wences) February 20, 2016
Bitcoin Classic is a hard fork bitcoin block size increase proposal currently supported and led by Bitcoin Core developers Gavin Andressen and Jeff Garzik, and industry leaders including Coinbase and Circle. If Bitcoin Classic achieves the 75% support threshold and becomes successfully implemented, the Bitcoin block size will be increased to 2 megabytes immediately, hence the name hard fork.
However, the announcement of Xapo has become controversial amongst the community and existing Xapo users, because the implementation of Bitcoin Classic could lead to a split chain, an event in which two Bitcoin chains co-exist in the same network. Historically, if two Bitcoin chains co-exist in the same network, the minority becomes eliminated almost instantly, unifying to one single chain. Thus, if Bitcoin Classic overtakes the Core chain, the Bitcoin network would be unified to the Classic chain that is controlled and maintained by another team of developers with a separate vision.
Because of this possibility, Xapo users have begun to call the move of Xapo a “anti-Bitcoin camp,” as in theory, eliminates the existing Bitcoin chain and creates a separate coin developed by a separate entity.
@wences Sad to see Xapo moving into anti-Bitcoin camp organized by Coinbase and Circle. Time to shut down my Xapo account, it seems.
— Bitcoin: вce новости (@bit_novosti) February 20, 2016
Xapo users have also begun to question the motivation and intent behind Xapo’s decision to support Bitcoin Classic and overall scaling of the Bitcoin network considering their absence in various scaling conferences and round tables held in Hong Kong and Montreal during the past few months.
@wences If you’re so “committed” to helping scale. Where was @xapo in Montreal, Hong Kong, and other “scaling” meetings? Pfft.
— Chakra (@chakrascientist) February 21, 2016
Still, many bitcoin enthusiasts in the community are praising Xapo’s attempt to help the scaling of the Bitcoin network and initiatives led by leading companies such as Coinbase and Circle.
@wences Awesome to see Xapo continues to deeply understand bitcoin as ideal-money, with low-friction & adoption network-effect being key.
— Dan McArdle (@robustus) February 21, 2016
