In regards to Bitcoin Gold, the snapshot for Gold occurred several weeks ago. Most exchanges did not credit us with Bitcoin Gold, most do not support it, and as a result their withdrawals caused any Gold they had to be lost to replay protection. Chris did attempt to set up Bitcoin Gold, but he discovered that the source code for their own client has syntax errors and doesn't even compile. It isn't known if Bitcoin Gold will ever have a working client, or if any exchanges will support it, so we do not plan to credit Bitcoin Gold to customers. However, if the coin does become widely supported in the future, we may offer it for payouts then, without any retroactive credits.
The concern with the upcoming fork to Segwit2x is the likely panic on the legacy Core network. Since Bitcoin has a two-week difficulty adjustment window, the only way that both forks would actually be usable is if they both had approximately equal hashrate to process blocks until the next difficulty adjustment (which would be an entire month.)
Current promises indicate that 3/4 of the miners plan to start with mining the larger block network. If the figure holds, then Segwit2x will start with 6 times the capacity as the legacy chain, resulting in (at minimum) a two-month period where the legacy chain's blocktimes exceed 40 minutes. While some SHA-256 miners use profit-switching pools like ours, history has shown that the network hashrate of Bitcoin does not fall radically when Bitcoin Cash becomes more profitable to mine. Therefore, the starting value of the coin networks is likely to be determined by the amount of hashrate that initially mines each network, since the other will be immediately unusable.
Between the slow blocks, restricted blocksize, and panic selling, we don't see it as likely that we'll be able to get our replay-protection transaction, and then our payout transaction, out to customers before the legacy network loses almost all of its value. If the pool operators renege on their "agreement," or switch to mine the legacy network after the split, then the same problem will be true but to a lesser extent of the 2x network, where there would be half as much congestion.
Our policy in regards to the Segwit2x fork will be that we will first send a replay protection transaction to protect our money. Customers will be double-credited. Then, on the days after the fork, the payout threshold for both coins will be raised to infinity. You can be paid immediately by setting a custom payout threshold, and accepting the transaction fees. We expect the transaction fees on the legacy Core chain to rise to hundreds of dollars as people struggle to get out before it loses value. We will resume normal payouts when transaction fees subside to reasonable levels, or when one of the chains is worthless.
Finally, there will be no bitcoin payouts at all, on either fork, the day of the fork. That's simply because Bittrex, Poloniex, the GDAX, and other exchanges are disabling withdrawals.
Here's what you can do:
- If you simply want to earn the same amount of value as any other day, change your payout proportions to 100% litecoins and ignore the situation.
- If you believe that both forks will retain value indefinitely, do nothing and wait to be paid once the transaction fees on the networks return to reasonable levels. That could take several days. At that time, you'll either be paid both coins, or if miners stop mining one of them due to market conditions, the coins you are owed in the network that is still processing blocks.
- If you want to actively trade the markets and exchange your coins, lower the payout threshold and your debts will be paid as soon as we can get our replay-protection transaction confirmed by the networks. You are likely to incur massive transaction fees, possibly as high as $20 or $50.