Hong Kong-based Bitfinex and San Francisco-based Coinbase have made the announcement to implement the SegWit technology for only Bitcoin cryptocurrency on their exchanges. The idea is to improve the transaction speed while reducing the transaction fee involving bitcoin.
The world’s two biggest cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase from San Francisco and Bitfinex from Hong Kong have announced that they are implementing the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol for bitcoin trading on their exchanges.
The move has been an attempt to address the slow processing times and high transaction fees. It has been reported that the Coinbase users will be able to benefit from this much anticipated SegWit most probably form most week.
Bitfinex said in a statement:
“The SegWit implementation means Bitfinex users can benefit from lower BTC withdrawal fees (approximately 15 percent) and improved processing times on transactions across the Bitcoin network.”
The exchange also made clear that the use of SegWit addresses for deposit and withdrawals is only for bitcoin and doesn’t apply to bitcoin cash.
As for Coinbase, it released a tweet regarding completing the SegWit testing for bitcoin. In December, last year, it had confirmed of its plan to implement SegWit. The goal of Coinbase is to target a 100 percent launch by the mid of next week to all of its customers.
SegWit is basically a soft-fork software update of bitcoin blockchain that enlarges the blocks of the chain allowing for improved security, lower transaction fees and faster transaction speeds. This would result in upgrading the 1MB blocks of bitcoin blockchain to grow into the size of 1.8MB blocks.
On August 2017, this upgrade was activated but only about 12 percent bitcoin transactions are making use of it. With Coinbase and Bitfinex handling over half of the world’s bitcoin trading volume, the SegWit usage figure is going to grow significantly.
According to Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Bitfinex:
“By supporting SegWit addresses, Bitfinex is tackling three of the biggest crypto-enthusiast concerns: transaction fees, transaction speed, and total network capacity. We are delighted that through this implementation we can provide our customers with bitcoin withdrawal fees that are up to 20 percent lower, as well as faster-than-ever transaction speeds.”
Once its gets implemented, bitcoin will join the likes of DigiByte, Litecoin and Vertcoin that has already adopted this technology. However, SegWit can’t be confused with SegWit2x as it is even a further upgrade that got cancelled.
The announcement of SegWit adoption has allowed Coinbase and Bitfinex to release a good news for its users amidst their recent controversies.
What are your thoughts on Coinbase and Bitfinex implementing SegWit bitcoin update? Let us know below!
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