Bitcoin Infinity: Bridging the Great Divide


avatar Quebex Fintech Inc.
Mar 24, 2017

Recently, we discussed how bitcoin discussions have been riddled with how to take on the scalability problem:

https://quebex.com/The-Great-Bitcoin-Divide-On-Dwindling-Block-Space

Recently, Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) and Segregated Witness (SegWit) have been the only proposed solutions. It has recently come to light, however, that another scalability solution may be on the horizon. Dubbed “Bitcoin Infinity”, the solution would allow post-SegWit blocks to scale up to 32MB in size.



Bitcoin Unlimited has seen several developmental issues and exploits made public, while SegWit activation is feared for the possibility of further centralization. Bitcoin Infinity can resolve the scaling issues of the network, but it requires SegWit activation in order to work.

Ben Davenport, the CTO and Co-Founder of BitGo recently published a blog post explaining their intentions surrounding the possibility of a bitcoin hardfork. When the three main criteria for BitGo to support a hardfork solution were tested, BU failed all three tests.

The tests BitGo used to measure BU are as follows: transactions from one chain should be invalid on the other (known as two-way replay protection), the fork should be permanent, and the fork should have a clear means of on-chain activation.

Two days ago, a large bitcoin holder extended an offer to Roger Ver and Jihan Wu, opening a trade for BTC to BTU at a 1:1 ratio. Loaded, the bitcointalk.com forum user offered both parties an exchange of between 60,000 and 130,000 BTU tokens for their BTC tokens. Roger Ver accepted on March 22, 2017.

When this article was written, the offer was worth between 82,434,419CAD and 178,607,909CAD (approx. 1374CAD per bitcoin).