The decision by BitPay to work with Bitmain to develop an open source Blockchain security software has been strongly criticized by many respondents to the tweet that has announced the agreement.

The world’s leading provider of Bitcoin payment technology looks forward to the multi-million dollar development agreement to enable it to create advanced open source software for the miners, mining pools and full node operators that maintain and secure Blockchain transactions.

However, the majority of the respondents that have taken to the BitPay Twitter page disagree with the decision that some of them tagged a terrible move.

Adam Wyatt, COO of BullBear Analytics which provides price analysis of major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, tweets:

“@BitPay Please don’t. ... I will stop recommending your services for now… #bitcoin.”

The founder of the International Blockchain Real Estate Association, Ragnar Lifthrasir‏, considers it a “horrible decision” and called for a boycott of BitPay or recommending them.

For the President of Bitcoin Association Switzerland, Lucas Betschart, the agreement is tantamount to being “In bed with the devil.”

As a processor of hundreds of millions of dollars in payments yearly for businesses worldwide including industry leaders like Microsoft, Valve, and PaySafe, some of the Twitter respondents threatened to stop using BitPay’s effort henceforth.

They include Morgan Rockwell, the CTO of General Bitcoin which aims to bring Bitcoin to large institutions, corporations and governments, who mentioned he would stop using BitPay immediately as it “is now very dangerous.”

Move explained

In the announcement, BitPay CEO Stephen Pair notes:

“We value having Bitmain as a customer, and we believe that miners and mining technology providers like Bitmain play a vital role in the security and ongoing success of the Bitcoin Blockchain.”

The move by BitPay and Bitmain brings back the UASF debate which Pair had stated specifically not to support because “... BIP148 is too easily gamed and it puts us at risk of a hard fork.”

Bitmain and its founder, Jihan Wu, support Bitcoin Unlimited, a proffered solution to solve Bitcoin’s scalability issue which is not wholly accepted in the Bitcoin community.

Bitmain also maintains AntPool which holds the largest hashrate distribution amongst Bitcoin mining pools.