- OKCoin will delist Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV on March 1
- OKCoin CEO Hong Fang put the move down to concerns over the role of the two fork coins and Craig Wright’s recent copyright enforcement spree
- Fang said her and her team were “very disturbed” by Wright’s recent actions
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) have been delisted by OKCoin cryptocurrency exchange, with Craig Wright’s Bitcoin whitepaper copyright antics acting as the straw that broke the OKCoin camel’s back. OKCoin CEO Hong Fang revealed in an explanatory blog post that the decision was the “result of our most recent asset review” but that there was some “unique history and context” that needed to be explained with regard to the dual delisting, with the role of the two fork coins in the current crypto climate the key reason behind the move.
Market Has Voted on BCH and BSV Relevance
Fang states in the blog post that OKCoin was always agnostic when it came to the three Bitcoin versions available following the forks, but that over time one has flourished while two have not:
It’s been interesting to observe how people have voted with their own money over the last three years. Today, BTC’s market cap has grown to almost $1 trillion, overtaking top public companies like Visa and Facebook in size. BCH and BSV, in contrast, are valued at respectively ~1.5% and ~0.5% of the original Bitcoin.
However, it is not the success of Bitcoin as opposed to its two rivals that was the problem as far as Fang was concerned. Fang and her team had become concerned over the huge gap in prominence between Bitcoin and its two forks, and had become worried that new entrants might be confused between the three coins, given how each is promoted strongly as the ‘real’ Bitcoin.
Craig Wright Copyright Antics Tip the Balance at OKCoin
These concerns were increasing when BSV co-creator Craig Wright went on his Bitcoin copyright-enforcement spree last month, actions that tipped Fang and her team over the edge:
… we feel very disturbed by the copyright claim and threat of legal actions that Craig Wright is waging against the open-source community. Wright’s recent lawsuits against websites hosting the Bitcoin white paper are part of a long historical chain of problematic legal actions surrounding his entirely unproven claim to be the creator of the original cryptocurrency.
Fang noted that as a result of Wright’s actions her and the OKCoin team were “having a hard time ignoring the malicious misinformation war waged by Craig Wright and other high-profile members of these communities” and that they didn’t want newcomers to feel “tricked or confused by the branding ambiguity between these assets and Bitcoin.”
As a result, BCH and BSV will be delisted by OKCoin on March 1. Given that BCH and BSV only make up 0.06% of OKCoin’s daily trading it won’t be a huge loss to them, and technically speaking it won’t be a loss to the coins either. However, in terms of community and industry sentiment, the message couldn’t be any clear – this town’s only big enough for one Bitcoin, and it’s Bitcoin.
