Bitcoin exchange Coinbase will now include Bitcoin Classic as a means to block confirmation by running Bitcoin Classic nodes. The news was revealed by CEO Brian Armstrong following the fork’s announcement of a new code that pushes for doubling the blocksize to 2MB.
In a Twitter post today, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the bitcoin exchange will now integrate Bitcoin classic nodes. Armstrong also pushed for adoption of Bitcoin Classic among users via his personal Twitter account, calling the effort as a means to “help Bitcoin scale.”
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/697577379007324160
The announcement via a tweet came with predictable responses with some seeking clarity if Coinbase was switching over to Bitcoin Classic as the primary running node going forward. In response, Armstrong revealed that Coinbase’s integration of Bitcoin Classic will be in tandem with several node types implemented by the company.
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/697600458441887745
Armstrong also confirmed the interoperability of bitcoin belonging to the company’s users, stating their validity across all nodes.
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/697578014272434176
Coinbase’s move to run Bitcoin Classic comes at a time when the debate concerning Bitcoin’s block size is coming toward a bottleneck wherein lines are being drawn during the infighting among the Bitcoin community. Bitcoin’s mining pools, collectively representing 70% of the total hashing power of the Bitcoin network, released a letter today to make their position clear in the debate by rejecting the hard fork.
While it makes for idle speculation, the open reveal by Coinbase’s CEO could persuade its userbase (there are over 3,000,000 Coinbase users) to adopt and run Classic nodes. In the space of a week, the number of Bitcoin classic nodes has grown 700% following the release of its new updated code which allows for doubling the size of a block.
For those in support of the new fork, the news of Coinbase implementing Classic nodes will come as a welcome boost. For the overall bitcoin community, it adds to the debate.
Featured image from Shutterstock. Node chart from Node Counter.
