OKCoin is delisting bitcoin cash (BCH), a fork or “clone” of bitcoin, as well as its own fork, bitcoin sv (BSV), both as a way to protect neophyte clients who are trying to buy bitcoin and as a statement of principle.
Shared exclusively with CoinDesk before Friday’s announcement, the exchange’s higher-ups decided to scuttle the markets for either coin because they created confusion for new clients who joined OKCoin to buy bitcoin.
On top of that, the routine lawsuits and legal threats from Bitcoin SV creator Craig Wright played a hand in the exchange decision to delist both BCH and BSV.
“This is not an easy decision. We had a choice and there is collateral damage, but we had to stand up for the bigger principle we believe in,” OKCoin CEO Hong Fang told CoinDesk, adding that OKCoin’s team tries to not let their “opinions color their decision making.”
Still, Craig Wright’s most recent legal crusade against developers who host Bitcoin’s white paper was a breaking point. For Fang, it became a choice between protecting Bitcoin’s open source ethos or championing free-market fundamentals.
In the end, community won out.
“On the one hand we feel very strongly about protecting the open-source ethos, but on the other, if we do something about it, that would conflict with our principle of being a neutral platform. We wouldn’t have changed that if it weren’t for Craig Wright posting these threats to the open-source dev community. We think these threats are very destructive to development and Bitcoin as a whole,” Fang told CoinDesk.
Additionally, these coins bear bitcoin’s name and that has “caused a lot of confusion about what is the real bitcoin among new entrants,” Fang expressed.
“When we have all three on the platform and we have new clients onboarding, most are coming [to buy] bitcoin as a store of value. But when they see BSV and BCH they get confused.”
Bitcoin Cash is a “fork” of Bitcoin, meaning it was cr...
