BTCChina Support Gives BIP 100 Bitcoin Hashrate Majority

UPDATE (28th August 14:21 BST): Mining firm 21 Inc, which accounts for over 7% of the current bitcoin hashrate, has also noted its support for BIP 100. Garzik's proposal now has 58.6% of the network's hashing power behind it.

UPDATE (28th August 13:12 BST): One of the leading transaction processors, KNC Miner, is now tagging its blocks in support of BIP 100. In a statement, the company said it would support both BIP 100 or BIP 101 as they would "propel bitcoin for all".

BTCChina has backed Jeff Garzik's block size scaling solution, giving BIP 100 a majority of the network's hashing power.

With the addition of the Chinese bitcoin firm today, the proposal now has support from the top three 'blockmakers' – who account for over 50% of the network's hashrate.

Speaking to CoinDesk, BTCChina CEO Bobby Lee said the company's structure gave it the ability that few others have:

"We are in the unique position of seeing this from several sides, a mining pool, a wallet service, and an exchange. So we must come forward with a sound perspective, and not just vote quickly for the sake of asking the industry to move on."

Up until today, the firm – alongside China’s other pools – had been backing the 8MB proposal, however it is now taking issue with the consequences of a sudden step change. In an open letter, to released on its blog today, the company said:

"BTCChina has experienced firsthand the problems of high orphan rates and the related risks of the blockchain forking. Our perspective is that the Internet today, in China and also globally, is not yet ready for unrestrained, automatic increases of the block size."

If BIP 100 is adopted by the industry, BTCChina will vote for a 2MB limit, with a view to increase to 8MB in the "mid-term". This, the firm says, will give stakeholders time to study any effects the increased block size has on the network and plan ahead accordingly.

BTC China is also one of the sponsors behind a Montreal workshop gathering many bitcoin stakeholders to discuss the pros and cons of various scaling solutions. Lee added:

"Even though this issue is not fully resolved yet, I have full confidence that we will come together as a community and one solution will emerge that everyone can be happy with."

Bitcoin image via Shutterstock.