Coinbase Resumes Trading Of Bitcoin Cash

November 21, 2018 12:07 AM

Today, on Tuesday, November 20, Coinbase announced that on its platforms, the Bitcoin Cash ABC chain will retain the Bitcoin Cash title and ticker symbol, BCH. Moreover, limited trading is expected to resume on Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Prime today. On Coinbase.com and the company’s iOS and Android apps, trading is expected to resume “within the next week.”

For the moment, Coinbase will only offer limited trading options for BCH, and will not allow sending or receiving. For example, customers may trade their BCH for BTC, but they will not be able to send their BCH to their MetaMask wallet.

According to the announcement, trading of Bitcoin Cash SV is not expected to resume any time soon, or maybe at all:

“Our current intention is to support withdrawal services for the BCH SV chain so that our customers may withdraw funds at a future date. We anticipate this development work will take at least a few weeks, but may take longer.”

Responses to the announcement have been mixed, as to be expected. The Bitcoin Cash hard fork hasn’t exactly been full of equanimity and goodwill, and despite the prominence of Coinbase, it has its own solid set of detractors. The primary criticisms seem to be that Coinbase has been too slow to act, that trading should have already resumed, that Coinbase is unjustly bearish on Bitcoin Cash SV, and that Coinbase’s sluggishness will inevitably lead holders of Bitcoin Cash SV to lose out on the opportunity to sell.

Coinbase cites customer safety as its motivation for the lag, a claim supported by its move to re-allow trading on Pro and Prime first. Coinbase Pro, while very similar to Coinbase.com, is intended for an audience more experienced with crypto trading. Coinbase Prime is specifically for institutional investors. 

The exchange also cites consumer safety for its hesitance to support Bitcoin Cash SV. This seems a widely held reticence, though not every major exchange is handling it in the same way. On Sunday, Kraken announced that it would be offering both Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) and Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH), though warned investors that the exchange would list BSV despite the fact that it “does NOT meet Kraken’s usual listing requirements, and “should be seen as an extremely risky investment.”

Binance also announced that it would offer trading of both Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV, though assigned them different ticker symbols: BCHABC and BCHSV. 

Alison is an editor and occasional writer for ETHNews. She has a master’s in English from the University of Wyoming. She lives in Reno with her pooch and a cat she half likes. Her favorite things to do include binge listening to podcasts, getting her chuckles via dog memes, and spending as much time outside as possible.

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