Who has the final say over the name of Bitcoin? Coinbase's stance on segwit2x angers the public

On October 23, Coinbase revealed their plans regarding the naming of the upcoming segwit2x fork token, assuming the Bitcoin blockchain forks again in November. The day after the company made its first announcement, Coinbase communications director David Farmer provided clarification on how their company chooses the names of each chain.

Coinbase Revises Stance on Segwit2x

The Bitcoin network is expected to fork at block 494784 in the coming weeks or around November 16. Many Bitcoin businesses are releasing their plans for the upcoming segwit2x fork, detailing how they will handle the potential blockchain split and how they will decide to name the tokens on each blockchain. Coinbase, which has millions of Bitcoin users and processes a large number of Bitcoin transactions, announced on October 23 in its FAQ section how they will handle the blockchain labeling issue.

Coinbase explained at the time:

“After the fork, we will continue to refer to the current Bitcoin blockchain as “BTC” and we will refer to the new blockchain created after the fork as Bitcoin2x, represented by “B2X”. If segwit2x is accepted by the majority of users, we may later rename these blockchains.”

However, this FAQ section has since been revised to include another version. The company’s current segwit2x guidelines are somewhat different than before:

“[After the change], when the fork occurs, the existing blockchain will be called Bitcoin and the segwit2x blockchain will be called Bitcoin2x. Ultimately, we will call the fork with the highest mining difficulty “Bitcoin.” We will wait for a while after the fork before deciding whether to rename it.”

Coinbase: We will call the chain with the highest difficulty Bitcoin

Additionally, Coinbase head David Farmer further explained the company’s stance.

“In our previous blog, we stated that when the fork occurs the existing blockchain will be Bitcoin and the segwit2x fork will be Bitcoin2x. However, some customers have asked us to clarify what will happen after the fork - we intend to refer to the highest difficulty chain as Bitcoin.”

In the blog post, the sentence about hashrate is written in bold, and Farmer goes on to say that Coinbase will prioritize naming after each chain is stable. Farmer also said that Coinbase will even consider market capitalization and community support before determining the token’s label and code.

Farmer stressed:

“It’s important for us to remain neutral between all the forks.”

“We believe letting the market decide is the best way to ensure Bitcoin remains fair and open.”

Second announcement angers Bitcoin “community”

Naturally, this decision irked those who liked Coinbase’s stance in the first announcement. Right after Coinbase announced that they would refer to the highest difficulty chain as “Bitcoin,” this announcement immediately caused an uproar among those who were against segwit2x. For example, Satoshi Labs CEO and Slush Mining Pool founder Marek Palatinus spoke out via Twitter when Coinbase made the second announcement:

“Hashrate does not determine what Bitcoin is, and you know that.”

On the Reddit subreddit /r/bitcoin, where the Coinbase thread was filled with anger and anxiety, Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhess responded to forum participants who were blatantly telling people to withdraw their bitcoin from Coinbase immediately.

Voorhees explained:

“Coinbase, Xapo, and Gemimi (and others who have not been officially named) have all simply said they will let the market decide what Bitcoin is, and that they are following the Bitcoin whitepaper — and for this reason, /r/bitcoin is persecuting them.”

Overall, Coinbase’s second notice came as a surprise to the few who had seen the first notice. In addition, Voorhees’ statement is true, and Coinbase is not the only company to say it will refer to the highest difficulty chain as “Bitcoin.” However, there are also companies that have said they will not support software consensus rules other than Core, and many believe that miners are the root of all evil.