Coinbase Wallet To Discontinue Support of Bitcoin Cash

I first discovered Bitcoin Cash from using the old noise.cash site. Last year, the tips were plentiful and the price of BCH surged past $1500 per token in May. I was pretty impressed with the speed of transactions. Bitcoin Cash itself was created in August 2017 when Bitcoin miners and developers initiated a hard fork of the original Bitcoin code. Part of the reasoning behind its creation was to increase transaction speeds. Bitcoin Cash uses larger blocks, up to 32 MB, to process transactions faster and boast lower transaction fees than the original Bitcoin. 

Obviously, the original Bitcoin wins out price appreciation since inception by a long shot. Bitcoin Cash also falls short on adoption, as the network processes a fraction of the transactions that Bitcoin does.

Coinbase Announces Discontinuation of Support for BCH in Wallet

On November 30, Coinbase announced that it would no longer support the Bitcoin Cash asset on its wallet. The exchange has cited "low usage" as the reason. And there's certainly a point to be made there. Just have a look at the average monthly trading volume since January 2022:

Through the first five months of the year, average monthly trading volume was well over 100 billion. It has plummeted to to 7-9 billion over the past four months. The price per token has taken a shellacking over 2022 as well, like all other cryptocurrencies.

If you are using Coinbase Wallet be aware that as of January 2023, Bitcoin Cash will no longer be supported. You will still be able to withdrawal to another non-custodial wallet. Other assets that won't be supported starting next year are Ethereum Classic, Stella, and Ripple.

Misleading Report by Fortune

I stumbled upon this news from Coinbase as I'm a user of their wallet. When I saw this headline featured on Fortune Crypto, I was concerned and had to look further into the situation myself.

The article uses the word "delisting," which is actually technically incorrect. A delisting implies that the tokens will no longer be available to buy, sell, or swap on the Coinbase exchange. If you read the very last bullet point on the official statement from Coinbase:

So it appears that Bitcoin Cash will still be tradeable on their exchange, just no longer supported in the Coinbase Wallet. At least that's my interpretation of that final bullet point. It doesn't quite sound like a delisting to me.

I wanted to share this information, as many of the crypto blogging/microblogging sites I frequent use Bitcoin Cash. It's always been one of my favorite "altcoins." Though I do wonder what the future holds for BCH. As of this writing, the price is down 85% since its inception. 

Fun fact - I once paid off a bet in Bitcoin Cash.