Updated on Thu, 26 May, 2022 at 5:13 PM
Lately, the emergence of “forks” and “airdrops” has created a new method for delivering perceived and real value to owners of existing digital currencies. The fast development of new forks and airdrops has raised questions about how Bit2Me customers may expect to receive or not receive this value. Each fork or airdrop faces technical, security, liquidity and timing challenges. This document describes the issue and clarifies Bit2Me's policy on how it will deal with forks.
The most important goal of Bit2Me is always security. Bit2Me will never introduce support for any fork where Bit2Me believes it may be unsafe. As forks have come out over the past year, many have been launched quickly, with technical implementations changing rapidly until the new fork is launched.
Bit2Me also aims to preserve value for customers. When forks with significant value occur, Bit2Me will work with customers to attempt to deliver that new value to customers. It should be noted that Bit2Me may or may not support the coin in a fully functional wallet with those security principles that Bit2Me generally seeks to maintain. Bit2Me will provide customers with tools to access the coin and convert it into other forms of value.
Bit2Me treats Airdrops and Forks similarly for the purposes of this document. Bit2Me customers generally will want all the value they can access, and whether new value is delivered via an Airdrop or a Fork, Bit2Me's review and support of that new value will be determined by the protocol described in this document.
There are 5 main factors that are taken into account in Bit2Me's decision to deal with a fork: technical stability, market capitalisation, liquidity, cost and time.
Given that security is our most critical goal, the technical analysis of any new fork or airdrop is very important. Bit2Me will support a fork if it considers the new fork to be technically secure and reliable. This will be determined based on a number of factors, including:
Bit2Me will support a new fork or airdrop if the value within the fork or airdrop is large. If it does not fall into the top 10 exchanges for being worth more than $100 million globally, Bit2Me will probably not support it. Keep in mind that in some cases, a new fork or airdrop may seem to have enough market capitalisation, but may not have enough liquidity (see below).
The forked coin, in conjunction with the required market value, must also be adequately liquid. For instance, a Bitcoin fork with a valuation of even $10 for the coin would have a market capitalization of more than $160 million. But if it’s little traded, access to the coin's value would be a mirage for Bit2Me's customers. Before Bit2Me can support the coin, there must be significant liquidity in the market on reputable exchanges for a continuous period of time.
Bit2Me considers the forked coin to have real value only if it has daily liquidity of at least $25 million on recognised and reliable exchanges for a period of 14 days.
Supporting new currencies involves significant costs. Bit2Me's emission of wallets for a currency basically supports both the currency and its blockchain forever. Apparently, some forks are easy for Bit2Me to support. As an example, if a forked coin is the same technologically as the original coin, it may be relatively cheap to add the new coin.
On the other hand, some forks or airdrops may be technologically very different from the pre-existing supported coins. New coins or airdrops may for instance be based on different cryptographic algorithms (RSA instead of Elliptic Curve), may have new transaction formats, block formats, multi-signature features or other modifications. If the changes are major, the more expensive the cost of support and maintenance will be.
In case a new fork is expensive, but has significant value for Bit2Me's customers, the company will do its best to allow users to access the new currency. Keep in mind that this may affect the timeframe in which Bit2Me can do this.
Usually new airdrops and forks are announced with some advance notification before the airdrop or fork takes place. In some cases the timing of the announcement is very short, even less than 8 weeks. There are also airdrops that are conducted in such a way that they will later "expire", giving deployers very little time to reclaim them before the value is lost.
To our regret, Bit2Me cannot guarantee the support of new forks or airdrops at short notice. Commercial obligations, the availability of developers and cost are material factors, and security, testing, quality and service are our primary goals. Bit2Me will make every effort to provide value to its users, but the company cannot guarantee a certain period of time when the exact requirements of future forks can be so varied.
Also, if Bit2Me decides not to support a fork at a specific stage, it does not mean that Bit2Me will never support that fork. As an example, at the time of initial launch, a fork may not meet the required stability market capitalization, or the liquidity requirements for Bit2Me to support it. However, should the fork become viable in the future, Bit2Me may, at its discretion, support the fork or the airdrop.
In the event of an upcoming modification to the Bitcoin Network or other applicable network that could potentially result in a fork of the Digital Asset Network or Airdrop, Bit2Me will make every effort to provide the value of the forked Digital Asset to the customer. However, the main concern of Bit2Me is always the security of its existing Digital Assets. Bit2Me, at its own discretion, may choose to make the Digital Assets available to the customer or not. In addition, implementing or providing access to any Digital Assets created as a result of a Fork may take Bit2Me considerable time. Customer shall indemnify Bit2Me for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss due to the inability to access any Digital Asset created as a result of a Fork or Airdrop.
In the event that Bit2Me deems a fork to be technically secure with sufficient market value and liquidity, but the customer wishes to access the fork prior to the time Bit2Me can support it due to cost or time considerations, Bit2Me will determine in good faith a product plan that allows the customer to access the value of the fork or airdrop so that the user, at their own risk, can access the coin.
Bit2Me reserves the right to update this policy and the criteria for measuring the viability of a Fork or Airdrop from time to time based on new technological, legal or environmental factors that may arise.
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