Coinbase, the #1 app on the App Store has been updated, to add support for trading Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a Bitcoin fork that was created on August 1, 2017.
When Coinbase Customers launched the message earlier today they were prompted with the following message:
Coinbase did not support Bitcoin Cash at launch as they did not feel they would safely support it. However, they had stated that they will add support for Bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018. They had issued the following statement at that time:
Forks enable innovation and improvements to digital currency and we believe that we will see an increasing number of forks in the future. We expect this to be a vibrant and innovative community.
When a digital currency forks, it creates a new digital asset. Adding new digital assets to Coinbase must be approached with caution. Not every asset is immediately safe to add to Coinbase from a technical stability, security, or compliance point of view.
If you are new to cryptocurrencies then here’s the definition of a fork:
A “fork” is a change to the software of the digital currency that creates two separate versions of the blockchain with a shared history.
Forks can be temporary, lasting for a few minutes, or can be a permanent split in the network creating two separate versions of the blockchain. When this happens, two different digital currencies are also created.
Interestingly though Coinbase had to disable buying and selling as for about an hour Coinbase and GDAX, Coinbase’s sister exchange were both showing Bitcoin Cash prices at $8,500, whereas other exchanges were showing only $3500. Meanwhile, prices of Bitcoin crashed by 10% and were around $17,000 at the time of writing this post. The Cryptocurrency exchange has announced that it plans to open BCH order books again on December 20 at 9:00 am PST.
Update on #BCH trading on GDAXhttps://t.co/p3cEx0ryh7 pic.twitter.com/NyGUTVFL91
— Coinbase Exchange (@CoinbaseExch) December 20, 2017
Coinbase CEO has just published a blog post titled “Our Employee trading policy at Coinbase” saying that the company plans to carry out an internal investigation to find out if someone at Coinbase profited from the inside information as the price of Bitcoin Cash on other exchanges which supported the Bitcoin fork increased in the hours before the company announced support for Bitcoin Cash.
If you want to understand how Bitcoin works then I would recommend watching this 5-minute video.
If you’re planning to buy Bitcoin or any other virtual currency, then Coinbase is the best place to start and you can even earn free bitcoin. If you use this link to signup for Coinbase, then we both will get $10 of free bitcoin once you buy or sell $100 of digital currency or more,
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