Coinbase: Bitcoin Cash now available
In block we trust.
Today, 20 December 2017, Coinbase announced that it would allow the buying and selling of Bitcoin Cash on its platform, and the accessing of Bitcoin Cash through its wallet.
"We've been monitoring the Bitcoin Cash network over the last few months and have decided to enable full support including the ability to buy, sell, send and receive. Factors we considered include developer and community support, security, stability, market price and trading volume," it said in a statement.
"Buys and sells will be available to all customers once there is sufficient liquidity on GDAX. We anticipate that this will take a few hours. We will abbreviate Bitcoin Cash as BCH on our platform. Customers will be able to buy Bitcoin Cash using all of our supported fiat currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD and SGD."
This is great news for Coinbase customers looking for a wider range of options, and is an especially nice windfall for those who held bitcoin in their Coinbase wallet at the time of the fork, on 1 August 2017. Those fortunate users will now be able to access their free bitcoin cash.
Even better for them, the price of Bitcoin Cash quickly climbed over the last 24 hours, growing by over $1,000 on 20 December alone to top US$3,500. At the same time, the price of bitcoin has dropped commensurately. It looks like a lot of investors have voted for the BCH with their feet, and their wallets, over the last 24 hours.
The legacy bitcoin blockchain has now spent the better part of a month getting slowly buried under a mountain of unconfirmed transactions and high fees, so it seems to make a lot of sense for exchanges to throw open their doors to altcoins like Bitcoin Cash.
