Brian Armstrong has answered Twitter critics of the Coinbase’s decision to run Bitcoin Classic simply proposing to bet $5,000 that bitcoin’s first hard fork will succeed. 

Armstrong cited some disapproval of the recent choice made by the exchange to follow the hard fork, claiming in return that it will not lead to a split but rather to upgrade of one single currency. Without trying to prove his case, Coinbase CEO proposed a bet open to any bitcoin enthusiast willing to accept it.

By “works out just fine” Armstrong means that the 3 precise conditions are met once the network is forked. Firstly, at least 95% of all hashing power is on a single chain regardless of the threshold used to initiate the upgrade. Secondly, at least 95% of all consumer wallet companies and cryptocurrency exchanges apply the new version. Armstrong admits that this number can be “tough to measure”, however he suggests to estimate it by counting users for major wallets and merchant software, as well as data for trading volume, which is public on most exchanges. Thirdly, two days after the upgrade happens, bitcoin price reaches the level higher than it used to be 1 month before its adoption.

Armstrong limits the bet to the first hard fork that will take place within a year from now. The money will be paid in any denomination and will go to any charity of the winner’s choice. Explaining his aims, Armstrong says that “this is mostly just for fun because I want to see how willing people are to put their money where their mouth is.” Some other details of Armstrong’s proposal could be seen here.

On 11 February Bitcoin Classic version 0.11.2, the first release of the new fork, went public. On the same day Brian Armstrong wrote in his twitter that Coinbase would switch to this version to “help Bitcoin scale,” which generated a vivid discussion in the bitcoin community.

Anna Lavinskaya