Bitcoin Cash Surges Over 70% as Coinbase Adds Support for the Cryptocurrency
Popular U.S exchange Coinbase has announced on its blog post that the company considers adding Bitcoin Cash (BCH) support for its users. This means that all the professional and retail traders, registered on Coinbase, can now involve in trading activities of Bitcoin Cash.
The blog post reads a welcome message saying “We’re excited to announce that customers will be able to buy, sell, send and receive Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase.” Soon following this announcement, there has been a wild upswing in the price of Bitcoin Cash where the cryptocurrency surged by 70% to hit its new all-time high of $3695.30, as per our data. This again puts BCH as the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap contributing $54.25 billion.
Bitcoin Cash was created on August 1st as a result of the hard fork in the Bitcoin blockchain with an aim to solve Bitcoin’s scalability issue and reduce the mempool congestion on the Bitcoin network, thereby increasing the block size. The announcement by Coinbase, which has over 13 million registered users on date, gives BCH a better visibility amongst cryptocurrency investors.
With this announcement, Coinbase has also clarified that all those “who held a Bitcoin balance on Coinbase at the time of the fork will now see an equal balance of Bitcoin Cash available in their Coinbase account. Your Bitcoin Cash balance will reflect your Bitcoin balance at the time of the Bitcoin Cash Fork.”
It further stated that “Coinbase operates by the principle that our customers should benefit to the greatest extent possible from forks or other networks events. This is essential in our mission to make Coinbase the most trusted, safe, and easy-to-use digital currency exchange.”
Coinbase Suspends Trading Sighting the Possibility of Insider Trading
Post the trading, a speculation regarding the possibility of insider trading soon sparked out in the market. The effect of the launch soon faded as some wild fluctuations were seen in BCH price. On the Coinbase exchange, Bitcoin Cash hit a high of $8,500 almost three times to its price of other exchanges where it was trading at $3,500.
There is a suspected possibility of a Coinbase staff involved in this matter who must have known about the launch and might have profited by buying BCH on other exchanges. It has been noted that the price of BCH on other exchanges started to increase suddenly even before the announcement. This could have possibly triggered a huge inrush of Coinbase users buying Bitcoin Cash and thus taking its value so high.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has assured on his Medium Blog that the company is investigating the matter around such huge spark in its price. He writes “Given the price increase in the hours leading up the announcement, we will be conducting an investigation into this matter. If we find evidence of any employee or contractor violating our policies — directly or indirectly — I will not hesitate to terminate the employee immediately and take appropriate legal action.”
Coinbase has suspended trading for the day (December 19th) and said that it will resume back on December 20 at 09:00 PST.