Yesterday, August 1st 2019, was the second anniversary of Bitcoin Independence Day, in commemoration of when Bitcoin network node operators initiated a User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) to enforce SegWit activation, against the will of a consortium of large Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin business leaders, ending a years long scaling debate. On August 1st 2017, Bitcoin users defeated an existential threat posed by powerful interests attempting to unilaterally change the Bitcoin protocol, negating the entire concept of a decentralized peer-to-peer network that no one controls. This day proved that users, by choosing what software they run and thereby which consensus rules they enforce, control the network. And we will not be fucked with.
If you’re new to Bitcoin or otherwise not familiar with what happened leading up to and following Bitcoin Independence Day, here are a number of great resources to help you understand why this was the most important, and most bullish, day in Bitcoin history.
Here is a podcast covering the history:
Here is an article covering the entire topic:
And here is another article explaining why SegWit2x was destined to fail after Bitcoin business leaders continued to march towards a hard fork in the wake of UASF:
Oh, and by the way, please do your civic duty and run a Bitcoin full node. Then you have a say in what consensus rules define Bitcoin, and help thwart would-be attackers in the future.