Warning: New Segwit2x fork is possible scam

in #bitcoin7 years ago (edited)

In order to solve the bitcoin scaling problems on May 23 2017 the so called New York Agreement was published: https://medium.com/@DCGco/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consensus-2017-133521fe9a77 . A large group of stakeholders decided to accept Segwit in August and to double the block size in November (Segwit2X). Blockstream however, one of the main stakeholders, was happy with the Segwit acceptance but declined the doubling of the blocksize. The blocksize doubling of Segwit2X was planned to take place around November 8 but just a week before the fork was actually going to happen a group of major stakeholders decided to cancel the operation(https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html ). Allthough Segwit2X was officially declared dead by the original founders recently a new team announced they were going to actually fork Segwit2X at block 501451 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2595620 ).

On the website of the new Segwit2X team (http://b2x-segwit.io/) the key members are introduced but the lineup may cause some doubts. The CEO and founder is Jaap Terlouw from the Netherlands. In linkedin I see that he is main developer at Segwit2X but his education is MEAO which is an intermediate level school of economics in the Netherlands and there is no prior record of any development activities. According to his dating profile he now lives in the Ukraine : https://tourbar.com/en/profile/1456382/jaap-terlouw_42_kiev_ukraine . Donna Khyuz is introduced as business developer, crypto developer and blockchain expert. According to the web archives (https://web.archive.org/web/20171219173316/https://www.instagram.com/donna_khyuz/ ) she previously introduced herself as Model, Dancer and Actress. Originally Sairam Jetty was introduced as lead developer but after he announced that he was not at all involved in the project his name was removed. I see little support for the new Segwit2x fork and also the Bitfinex Segwit2X token that tripled at the time of the announcement has collapsed again. Beware!

There are a few other credible posts that suggest that the new Segwit2X team could be a scam:
http://coin5s.com/content/flamboyant-return-segwit2x
https://blog.drhack.net/segwit2x-28-december-scam/