Coinbase, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, has announced that it is finally nearing the deployment of Segregated Witness (SegWit) on its network. The firm, which has drawn the anger of many in the bitcoin community, said that its users will be able to send and receive bitcoin using SegWit in the coming weeks.
SegWit was activated in August 2017. It brings features including segregated signatures which slim down the transaction size and therefore more transactions can fit inside a block, lessening congestion on the bitcoin network, potentially lowering fees. Advocates of the grandfather cryptocurrency believe that SegWit has the power to bring down high transaction fees to previously low levels, or at least lower them somewhat until the Lightning Network is deployed and transactions become instant and almost without cost.
The bitcoin community, especially vocal on r/bitcoin, believe Coinbase is dragging its feet on SegWit for political reasons. For whatever reason has caused the delay, Coinbase finally looks as though it is moving in the right direction.
Lloyds Banking Group announced a decision, recently, to stop its credit card customers from using their cards to buy bitcoin and presumably other cryptocurrencies. The decision was made after it felt that too many people were spending money on something that could rack up significant costs that the customer would be unable to repay.
Source: Twitter