The What, Why, and Who of Segwit2X (for noobs)

Here's broadly how Segwit2X came about, since so many are asking (if I mangled or missed something it's okay, my post is secured by proof-of-pedantry and you can find the proper info in the comments):Bitcoin devs came up with a cool bit of tech to improve Bitcoin (Segwit - it increases capacity makes a bunch of new features easy to implement). Unbeknown to those devs, this improvement inadvertently neutralised a neat trick the largest miner had come up with to make his mining more efficient (which equals more profit).This same miner had for some time harboured ambitions to rule Bitcoin. He was putting tens of millions into infrastructure, unlike users/devs/etc, and couldn't understand why he wasn't consequently in charge of the whole system.He hatched a plan intended to stall the implementation of Segwit, a plan which over time grew to include the goal of displacing the open/decentralised dev structure, and installing himself as king. He met with some Bitcoin devs in Hong Kong, agreeing to implement segwit if the devs would also code-up a change from 1MB to 2MB blocks. Under this proposal, Segwit would be a soft fork, and the 2MB bump would happen as a hard fork if it gained the support of the users. The devs began coding for segwit, but support for the 2MB hard fork was absent (the downsides far outweigh any benefit - users saw that 2MB blocks make it easier for a ruling class to install itself).The miner, rich on his secretly buffed profits, embarked on a spending spree. He bought healthy stakes in many of the most prominent players in the Bitcoin ecosystem (who changed overnight from user-supporting to miner-supporting positions). He also attracted certain individuals who own lots of bitcoin, and who also long for Bitcoin to acquire a ruling class.Angered by the community's refusal to accede to his 2MB fork, and eager to continue to enjoy his secret buff, the miner came out against Segwit (which had been designed to be activated by the miners).Together the wannabe-bosses began building a largely faked support (there exists much evidence of huge paid-for tweeting programmes and the like - there's actual billions at stake remember). Some useful idiots, unable to see how Bitcoin works and easily swayed by tough-talking strongmen, were swept along. Around 20% of the apparent user base is now aligned with the miner.With segwit still not implemented, one user devised a way to organise the power of all users to force the miners to implement segwit - this method was named "UASF" (or BIP148). It was well constructed, and scared the miner into meeting with his aspiring courtiers in New York, where they came up with "Segwit2X", a counter-plan to activate Segwit 'on their terms', which is tied to a 2MB hard fork as per their previous scheme. The miner's new plan was poorly conceived, widely judged to be simultaneously an attempt to further forestall segwit, install a ruling class, and prove the miners' power in the face of the upstart (from their perspective) UASF.The UASF succeeded. To save face and inflict petulant damage on Bitcoin, the miner then paid for the creation of a new coin (Bcash) forked from Bitcoin, marketed as 'the real Bitcoin', and quickly rejected by users (today it has the same number of tx in a day that Bitcoin has in 10 minutes). But at least we now have segwit.To nobody's great surprise, the miner and his acolytes are now pushing ahead with the 2MB part of their Segwit2X plan, and that's where we are today. They could easily fork from their own Bcash chain in a far less dramatic way, but their current plan is to fork from Bitcoin in a deliberately destructive way, which this analogy attempts to illustrate:Imagine some sorcerer could have every American wake up one day to find that each dollar bill they'd owned at bed time had been joined in their wallets by a wizardly duplicate. Seems great, but you discover that everything you do with the wizardbucks is magically enacted on your real dollars too (e.g. you sell/spend/bin them and your real $$$ disappears also). Additionally they're so hard to distinguish from the real $$$ that people accidentally use/accept one instead of the other.All we have to do is ignore the wizardbucks, but people are scared easily, this shit's complicated, and the wizard has a fake grassroots campaign in place already. via /r/Bitcoin http://bit.ly/2yyNkFX