In brief
- OKCoin will suspend trading of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV next month.
- Its CEO cites Craig Wright as the problem.
- Craig Wright claims to have created Bitcoin. His claims are unproven.
San Francisco-based crypto exchange OKCoin today announced it will suspend trading of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV, two forks of Bitcoin, from March 1, 2021.
CEO Hong Fang said that the suspensions are to protect Bitcoin against the “malicious misinformation war” waged by self-titled Bitcoin creator Craig Wright and “other high-profile members of these communities” (meaning those who promote Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV).
What are Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV?
In 2017, Bitcoin split into two major forks. A fork occurs when users of a blockchain split from the rest of the network to create a new blockchain network, often with different features. Bitcoin has been forked thousands of times, but Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are two of the largest.
Bitcoin Cash primes the coin for payments. It cuts transaction fees from tens of dollars to fractions of cents and decreases transaction times. The fork, created in 2017, increased Bitcoin’s block size to make it possible to process more transactions in a single batch.
Bitcoin SV, or “Satoshi’s Vision,” created in November 2018, increased that block size even more. It’s called “Satoshi’s Vision” because its creators believe that it carries out the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator.
Both coins have relatively small market caps. Bitcoin Cash’s market cap is $13 billion and Bitcoin SV’s is $4.3 billion. Respectable, but nothing compared to Bitcoin’s $1 trillion market cap.
Why is OKCoin suspending trading of BCH and BSV?
OKCoin said that it’s suspending trading of the coins because Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed and much-refuted creator of Bitcoin, is damaging Bitcoin’s community.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came last month, when Wright enforced copyright claims on Bitcoin’s white paper.
“We feel very disturbed by the copyright claim and threat of legal actions that Craig Wright is waging against the open-source community,” said CEO Hong Fang in a blog post.
Fang said it’s the latest in a “long historical chain of problematic legal actions” Wright has taken to defend his claim as Bitcoin’s creator. Wright has been banging this same drum for years now, even though judges have accused him of plagiarism and lying.
Fang continued: “Even if Wright doesn’t control or own the entire BSV community, he is a very significant and influential stakeholder there. If we continue to allow trading of BSV on our platform, we run the risk of implicitly supporting such an attack on the open-source nature of Bitcoin, which is highly destructive to the Bitcoin ecosystem (and the crypto ecosystem as a whole).”
So, no more Bitcoin SV or Bitcoin Cash for any of OKCoin’s customers. So far, the coins haven’t fallen in value.