Four weeks from today, a Bitcoin chain in which only SegWit blocks will be appended will exist. That is a fact. UASF/BIP148 guarantees that will happen.

What is unknown is if that will be the only chain.

Many plan to wait and see and hope that plans work out and no split occurs.

Hope is not a strategy.

How much of your funds today are at an exchange or some other type of custodial wallet? Have you checked how that service will handle a chain split?

If that exchange says they will support both chains, do you trust that service to have the technical chops to pull it off?

Remember $5 trx fees and long delays? Now imagine it is Jul 27th and you change your mind and want to withdraw. It will be too late then! The exits are narrow!

So instead you'll be motivated to simply cash out for fiat. Or worse, pile into overpriced altcoins — the same strategy that everyone else has resigned themselves to.

You can protect yourself from this, today. Withdraw from exchanges now while trx fees are cheap and delays are few.

Sit out the kerfuffle until we have one chain with SegWit activated (mid-August), or until there are two chains and you can be assured that splitting your coins is easy to do, safe, and routine.

Bitcoin wasn't designed to have contentious forks occur. It's a scenario that has been described as "catostrophic consensus failure". The key word here being catastrophe.

The best way to protect yourself is to gain control over your funds by moving them to a wallet where you control the keys.

Sooner rather than later.

And defintely before it is too late, which is probably going to be sooner than you realize.