According to CEO Brian Armstrong, Coinbase is now running the new version of Bitcoin software, Bitcoin-XT, a move which has divided the Bitcoin community in the past few days. The company is merely experimenting with the software, it stresses; however, this has inspired much contentiousness on online Bitcoin forums, including being removed from Bitcoin.org.
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Coinbase is now running BitcoinXT (BIP101) in production as an experiment, blog post w more details coming soon https://t.co/x2GHvQ6UOO
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 27, 2015
His announcement — which is pending a blog post on Coinbase — has caused much debate among Bitcoin players. Many questions were asked of Armstrong on Twitter, Armstrong cleared some things up:
To be clear, we are still open to other proposals, just want encourage things to move forward and #HelpBitcoinScale
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 27, 2015
People are much divided on what implementation of Bitcoin to use, and there has been much debate, including a Scaling Bitcoin conference, dedicated to the updating (or not) of the Bitcoin protocol due to its current limitations of 1MB per block size.
Many people believe Bitcoin should be some sort of global currency, and towards that end, the current implementation of Bitcoin does not process enough transactions per block — which take approximately ten minutes to create — to power a modern economy.
Coinbase, one of the largest Bitcoin companies on the planet, has chosen to run the new Bitcoin core, which uses BIP101, as an experiment. Many companies have pledged support inside the Bitcoin space as proponents of the XT implementation.
Founded in June 2012, Coinbase earned a May 2013 Series A of $5 million USD. In December 2013, the company received US $25 million investment led by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Ribbit Capital. The company formed partnerships with Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, Time Inc and Wikipedia before receiving $75 million investment including New York Stock Exchange.
Coinbase is a major influence in the Bitcoin sphere and this move could have reverberations through the Fintech space.
Upon making the announcement, Coinbase was removed from Bitcoin.org.
Wow…Coinbase removed from https://t.co/zj5LkmyP0Q for experimenting with how to scale bitcoin? https://t.co/orCF5dSNE6 disappointing
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 27, 2015
The debates, which cropped up over the weekend, will likely cause the Bitcoin community to reach conclusions quicker about what future protocol of Bitcoin should be used, and now Coinbase is at the center of that debate.
What do you think about Coinbase’s removal from Bitcoin.org? Let us know in the comments below!
Featured image courtesy of Coinbase
