Last week, one of the most popular and high-rated Bitcoin platforms, Coinbase, has announced that it won’t be supporting the new post-hard-fork coins: Bitcoin Cash (BCC).
As a result, a lot of users are transferring their funds to external wallets. Read on to find out what their choice is based on and what consequences it may lead to.
H-hour is coming
User activated hard fork (UAHF) will go live tomorrow, on August 1st, at 12:00pm UTC. We will witness something called chain split, and a new type of coins will be released.
In its blog post on July 27th, Coinbase made perfectly clear that they are only going to support one type of coins. The platform has taken several factors into account, including network size, market prices and client demands. According to Coinbase, it will be difficult to ensure the safety of new coins right after the event.
However, some wallets and exchanges have chosen a different path. The users of Kraken, Bitfinex and ViaBTC will receive an amount of BCC tokens that equals their funds.
Free lunch?
As expected, such offer caused a mass exodus from Coinbase. Users are hoping to get their “free” coins and make profit while they can. The platform is currently dealing with consequences of such decision. According to the status page, Coinbase is processing a large amount of outgoing transactions, resulting in a 12 hour delay. Last week, all users were recommended to withdraw their funds by 10:00am PT on July 31st, should they wish to access BCC.
Considering the stance many Coinbase users have taken in anticipation of the hard fork, it seems logical to just go ahead and move all your funds and get “free” money. But is anything actually free in this world? Is there a catch?
The value in form of BCC has to come from something. In our case, it comes from the BTC price itself.
There’s a lot of speculation regarding the future value of coins. BTC supporters assume that users will dump their BCC really soon in exchange for more BTC, demonetizing the new coin and forcing BTC value back up. Others recommend the traders to be extremely cautious during upcoming events and be ready to face high volatility of both coins.
