 Hey, this is Maria Jones at Queen Telegraph channel with the rundown of our hottest news stories from across cryptocurrency this week. Blockchain Across Borders Hong Kong and Singapore announced their cooperation on a cross-border blockchain-based trade project linking their trade finance platforms. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore signed an exchange cooperation agreement to strengthen cooperation on fintech with the view to bolster ties between the two cities and fostering fintech development within the region. The cooperation on this project will enhance the trade finance corridor between the two financial centers. The platform could significantly increase the efficiency of trade in the future as well as replace humans on time-consuming paperwork. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore stated that linking the two platforms is just one part of a broader plan between the future collaboration on blockchain and other fintech projects. Details about their cooperation will be announced by the two authorities next month. A new iteration at the Bitcoin blockchain Bitcoin Gold came into existence on Tuesday. This fork came less than three months after the controversial Bitcoin Cash Fork, who is effected as steel-built and felt. Bitcoin Gold is an adjustment for the Bitcoin blockchain that claims to try and make mining accessible to the general public again. Bitcoin dropped 4.4% on Wednesday, however cryptocurrency is still up 36% this month. Thomas Gluckswain, head of marketing at Hong Kong-based crypto exchange GateCoin, stated that Bitcoin's recent downtown has been driven by the trader's anticipation of minor disarray in the wake of their coming hard forks. The Bitcoin exchange and wallet community has been divided over decisions to support or reject this contentious hard forks. The risk has also been speculated at a Bitcoin rally ahead of the fork due to the opportunity to essentially double your coin. Bitcoin holders will also be credited with equal amount of Bitcoin Gold, however not many exchanges have come out in support of Bitcoin Gold. Further splits on the way with Segred 2x. Bitcoin's hard fork explained, right now there is a one megabit limit to the size of Bitcoin blocks. This was done to keep network nodes from upcoming under attack in Bitcoin's early days. One megabyte was set as a limit as blocks were 99% empty at the time. As Bitcoin grew so did the number of transactions trusted by on the network. This transaction will begin to pile up and form a queue. Blocks are created roughly every 10 minutes, however in 10 minutes transactions exceed one megabyte, causing delays and in a future block can be mined. This congestion caused delays in transaction verification times and applied pressure on senders to increase their transaction fee. This fee identifies miners to include their transactions in their current block. As blocks fill up, the fee required to be included on a new block rose proportionally. Bitcoin transactions begat to get very expensive if senders pay higher fees or very slow if senders choose to pay lesser fees. Bitcoin's current developers came up with a solution. Segregated witness. Segred is included in Bitcoin's current software. It works by separating the transaction data from the signature data, this back up to four times as many transactions into a block. Not everybody is happy just with implementing Segred. Some people wish to increase the maximum size of Bitcoin's blocks as well. This would give the network more room for growth. However, Bitcoin's car developers don't want a block size increase. This is because it involves a hard fork. A hard fork appears when computers running new versions at the software are no longer competitive with those running the old version. If done incorrectly, that can cause major problems. On May 23, 2017, the digital currency group published the New York Agreement. The NYA was signed by a large number of Bitcoin companies and minus representing over 80% of Bitcoin hash power. The signature is that the agreement accepted a compromise called Segred-2x. This plan calls for the near immediate activation of Segred, followed by a hard fork in November to double the block size. Segred-2x is a hard fork that will happen around November 16, 2017. As a result, there will be two chains. One will be the Bitcoin Core, Legacy Bitcoin, and the other will be the Segred-2 version of Bitcoins. If the four continues to be supported by the majority of miners, there will be serious confusion over which chain is the real Bitcoin. The principal concern about Segred-2x is that it doesn't provide replay protection. This leaves users on a false chain susceptible to attack on the legacy chain. However, enough in has been recently included. Co-developers believe that the hard fork is coming too far on the three months after Segred implementation. They argue for the fork to take place and be accepted. A lot of time is required to prepare the community and reach a consensus regarding it. Many members of the crypto community dislike hard forks as they weaken what is supposed to be a united decentralized community. The irony is real. For the very latest news and events from the crypto scene, check out contelegraph.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you would like to ask me a question or share your story with us, just leave a comment right here and see you next week.