August 1, 2017 under the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, Bitcoin 148 we be a user activated soft fork.
Worst Case Bitcoin Splits into two separate block chains
"A hardfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and therefore requires all users to upgrade.
Any alteration to bitcoin which changes the block structure (including block hash), difficulty rules, or increases the set of valid transactions is a hardfork. However, some of these changes can be implemented by having the new transaction appear to older clients as a pay-to-anybody transaction (of a special form), and getting the miners to agree to reject blocks including the pay-to-anybody transaction unless the transaction validates under the new rules."
"A softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognise the new blocks as valid, a softfork is backward-compatible. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules"
Bitmain seems to be a major player in this decision also with there announcement.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitmain-responds-uasf-another-hard-fork-announcement/
Questions:
Should I not trade at all on or around August 1st for fear of my trades not being validated?
Should I take "all" (its not much lol) off the exchanges and put them in a private key?
Many of you have been through Bitcoin changes, is this the first time you feel like everyone is being pushed to the edge?
Is this being blown out of proportion?
Should I wait a try to capitalize on a drop in the market?
All great questions. I wish I knew some answers. This is all new.
Nobody has ever done most of this stuff before, so there's no data for comparison.
I'm most interested to see, assuming bitcoin is still viable and stable, and there's only one blockchain when the dust settles, how far the price bounces up.
I'm tempted to move my btc onto a paper wallet to ride out the storm.