Just recently BCASH was added to Coinbase without any prior notification to users (only coinbase employees, and a few of their friends, and maybe their family members who all just happened to have GDAX accounts).
Shortly after, however, things started to quiet down in an unmistakably odd fashion. BCASH was pulled from Coinbase restricting interested users from buying or selling the new alt coin. Coinbase reasoning for pulling the coin was “significant volatility”–which is bit of an understatement, considering the price differed from other support exchanges by a mere $6000.
While Coinbase is eager to seem like a neutral party in this discussion and implementation of BCASH, it’s hard to take them seriously for a few reasons.
Coinbase Seeks to Blur the Line Between what is “Bitcoin”
Not only did they implement the coin without much notice, but they’ll also implemented sneaky new changes to an iOS widget to further blur the line between “Bitcoin” and “BCASH”. For some reason, Coinbase changed the icons for both Bitcoin and BCASH on the iOS widget for the Coinbase app. Whereas Bitcoin use to be an orange “B”, now both Bitcoin and BCASH are silver “B’s” with BCASH containing a slight angle. The question is, why is Coinbase making it so difficult to distinguish between the two currencies on iOS? On the website there is a clearer distinguishing factor with green for BCASH and orange for Bitcoin. Is this just another case of incompetence?
Why Support BCASH instead of Bitcoin With Lightning Network?
Earlier in the year we’ve seen numerous examples of Coinbase crashing with large volumes, and it’s hard to understand their rationale in accepting BCASH. With impending lightning network changes coming to Bitcoin soon making atomic swaps between a currency like Litecoin, it could be said that Coinbase is supporting a coin that better supports their network and use case. Instead of supporting the future of the original Bitcoin fully, they’ve added a copycat, that being BCASH.
The rationale behind Coinbase decision to add BCASH and take developer’s time away from future Bitcoin advancements begs the question–why use an exchange if you can exchange currencies yourself? BCASH does not support segwit which means that if users want to exchange it for another coin like Litecoin or Ethereum, they’d have to use an exchange like GDAX (owned by Coinbase). By implementing BCASH, Coinbase is actually attacking Bitcoin and its future.
Take Action:
Stop paying for stuff with coinbase. Cancel your coinbase and GDAX accounts.