With only a week to go before its planned implementation, yesterday’s announcement that Bitcoin’s planned SegWit2x fork is being shelved indefinitely came as somewhat of a surprise.

Ultimately this is good news. Bitcoin is already confusing enough to the average individual without another fork caused by lack of community consensus added to the mix—especially in the wake of the (very) recent Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold forks. Many view these recent forks as nothing more than scams designed to create wealth “out of thin air” by creating duplicate coins, and killing SegWit2x instead of further fracturing Bitcoin sends the right message.

The way that the SegWit2x saga unfolded still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, however. I suspect that the six individuals responsible for SegWit2x and its cancellation became quite a bit wealthier collectively over the past 24 hours. Judging from cryptocurrency pricing trends over the past couple weeks, quite a few investors have been shifting their funds from altcoins to BTC in anticipation of their “free” SegWit2x coins on the fork date. In the hours following the announcement that SegWit2x was dead, BTC dropped about 10%—and predictably, altcoins started rising steadily as people began converting their BTC back into other coins. Timing the cancellation announcement so close to the planned implementation (with Bitcoin’s price at an all-time high) probably made some insiders rich at the expense of the masses (like this unfortunate soul). Welcome to unregulated markets!