In a recent email, Coinbase announced that it will integrate support for Bitcoin Cash. It was only a few days earlier that the company tweeted that it will not interact with the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, but after pressure from the community and possible lawsuits that could arise, Coinbase pledged to add support for the cryptocurrency by January of 2018.
Specifically, Coinbase stated that they changed their mind “based on factors such as the security of the network, customer demand, trading volumes, and regulatory considerations.”
Many traders are criticizing the exchange’s relatively long expected timeframe to fund users’ accounts with BCH. Bittrex, Bitfinex, Kraken, and dozens more were able to integrate and credit the token within hours. In the cryptocurrency world five months is an eternity, a perfect example is how eventful this month has been.
I would like to clear one possible misconception, you do not have to keep your funds on Coinbase in order to get credited Bitcoin Cash. In fact, you are free to move your coins off the exchange and the Bitcoin Cash will be credited to your account at a later date.
“Customers with balances of bitcoin at the time of the fork now have an equal quantity of bitcoin cash stored by Coinbase.”
Overall, Coinbase made the right decision to move forward and support Bitcoin Cash. Though, they don’t have much choice either as those tokens legally belong to their rightful owners.
Surprisingly, so far the announcement hasn’t had much effect on the BCH price. It is trading at $387 at the time of writing down 20% in the past 24 hours after hitting an all time high of $727.
from The Merkle