There's been a debate (the "scaling debate") raging in the Bitcoin community for years. It's been especially bad the past two. I'll skip the details, but essent

There's been a debate (the "scaling debate") raging in the Bitcoin community for years. It's been especially bad the past two. I'll skip the details, but essentially two different visions for Bitcoin's growth have emerged. Both sides have proposed ways forward, only to be rejected by the community. A large number of companies and miners in the space came together recently in New York to agree on a compromise. The New York Agreement (NYA) was to combine two of the proposals- Segregated Witness, a soft-fork that provides some new features and a modest capacity increase, and a 2-MB hardfork. In response, extremists on the "small-blocker" side have declared that they'll likely force a chain-split on August 1st via a so-called "use-activated soft-fork". Now it's time to see what the market thinks :)