Fork Support. November 8, 2018.

Seven of the top ten major exchanges—OKex, Bitforex, Binance, Huobi, Upbit, Coinbase Pro, and Coinsuper—have announced that, in the event of a Bitcoin Cash hard fork on November 15, they will support both resulting currencies.

As it stands, no one knows Bitcoin Cash’s fate. What was intended to be a routine upgrade has devolved into a bitter turf war between BCH devotees with varying interpretations of a spurious “Satoshi’s Vision.”

But if the exchanges support the hard fork—which would likely split the currency between “Bitcoin SV,” Craig Wright’s iteration, and Bitcoin ABC’s iteration—that would, at least, assuage miners and investors frightened of getting cut out of the loop.

Indeed, some exchanges have made further assurances to worried investors. Most, for instance, have pledged to put a freeze on BCH transactions prior to the fork, ensuring funds aren’t lost in mid-fork limbo.

Still, the language is ambiguous enough to have sparked some concern. With the exception of 51st ranked exchange Poloniex, most exchanges have only pledged to “support the hard fork,” without much explanation as to what that, well, means. To some, it’s confusingly unspecific, like pledging support for “The World Series.”

The clearest statement, it seems, comes from digital wallet platform Ledger, which said it would choose whichever post-forked currency it evaluated was “dominant,” which presumably means whichever trades higher. 

We wonder which one that will be. 

Old men and their coins.

William Shatner’s schooling a coder on ERC-721 tokens and leathery old man John McAfee has tattooed “Skycoin” on his bare, leathery chest.

Let’s deal with Shatner first. The guy’s liked crypto for a while. He publicly endorsed the Solar Alliance in June, a solar-powered mining farm. And it turns out he’s pretty technically adroit.

Here he is, yesterday, articulately defending Vitalik Buterin on Twitter:

And here he is reaching for possibly the most convoluted crypto joke since yesterday’s Debrief.

McAfee, communicating both via Twitter and from deep within his very own special magic kingdom of the mind, isn’t so forthcoming. “Why Skycoin?” he asks of his new, terrifying tattoo. “If you have to ask, you've been living in a fucking closet,” a turn of phrase normally reserved for things people have heard of.

McAfee, meanwhile, has been living on another planet.

(Skycoin, for those in doubt, styles itself as the “most advanced blockchain platform in the world.” Presumably because John McAfee’s naked torso is a node. True or not, McAfee's Skycoin self-branding seems to have boosted the coin's price.)

Patent Thursday.

If there’s anything the institutional investors are good at, it’s racking up vertigo-inducing numbers of patents. And BOY, do we have two for you today.

Patent of the day goes to Japan’s Nomura Research Institute, which, in concert with ConsenSys (which funds Decrypt) has developed a way to immunize blockchains—specifically smart contracts—against cybersecurity threats.

A no-less interesting patent came from Salesforce, which has found a way to prevent email tampering. Emails are stored, prior to being sent, as hashes on a distributed ledger. This is then compared with the outgoing email, to ensure the two are the same. Supposedly, this could stop scammers and spammers hijacking automated messaging systems.

Speaking of which, the official Decrypt email newsletter is coming soon. Please sign up for it otherwise I will be forced to return to my old job selling shoes.

In other news:

• Ex-cop plans for the apocalypse with bitcoin.
• Venezuela worsens.
• Pompliano’s Apple debacle.

Read next:Rumors, swiftly denied.