Bram Cohen, the author of the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent, has criticized global bitcoin exchange and wallet platform Coinbase for running the Jonathan Toomim-led Bitcoin Classic.

Essentially, Bitcoin Classic is a hard fork which increases the block size of Bitcoin by 2 megabytes. Supported by industry leaders and bitcoin experts, Core developers including Gavin Andressen, Jeff Garzik and the Bitcoin Classic lead developer Jonathan Toomim are attempting to increase the bitcoin block size immediately to 2 megabytes, as soon as the activation threshold is met.

Coinbase and its CEO Brian Armstrong have been strong supporters of Bitcoin Classic, and have been running several pilot tests to convince other exchanges in the industry to run Bitcoin Classic with them.

The main issue with Bitcoin Classic however, is the inevitable technological conflict which will arise due to the presence of Bitcoin Core. If the Bitcoin Classic activation threshold is met, and if the Bitcoin Core developers decide to continue the development of the core chain, the Bitcoin network and all of its transactions will be divided into two major chains: the Core chain and Classic chain. In this type of situation, the two chains may result in two different market caps.

Understanding the danger and complexity of running Bitcoin Classic, Cohen strongly rejected the proposal and announcement of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to support Bitcoin Classic.

Regardless of the criticism of Cohen and other experts in the bitcoin industry, Armstrong claims that running the Classic chain remains user bitcoins interoperable/safe. He further emphasized that the company is running a few other nodes apart from Bitcoin Classic.

In case any confusion like last time, running Classic does not take you off the longest valid chain. Your Bitcoin remains interoperable/safe

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 11, 2016