Buy, sell, send and receive Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase
We’re excited to announce that customers will be able to buy, sell, send and receive Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase. You can read more about Bitcoin Cash on our FAQ page.
Sends and receives are available immediately. Buys and sells will be available to all customers once there is sufficient liquidity on GDAX. We anticipate that this will take a few hours.
Our customers should benefit from forks
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.
Bitcoin Cash was created by a fork on August 1st, 2017. All customers 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, which occurred at 13:20 UTC, August 1, 2017. You can read more about what a bitcoin fork is here and our previous update on Bitcoin Cash here.
We have been monitoring the Bitcoin Cash network over the last few months and have decided to enable full support including the ability to buy, sell, send and receive. Factors we considered include developer and community support, security, stability, market price and trading volume. You can learn more about Bitcoin Cash here.
We will abbreviate Bitcoin Cash as BCH on our platform. Customers will be able to buy Bitcoin Cash using all of our supported fiat currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD and SGD.
Coinbase maintains a strict trading policy and internal guidelines for employees. Coinbase employees have been prohibited from trading in Bitcoin Cash for several weeks.
Bitcoin cash scaled new heights today and looks solidly bid against its rival bitcoin (BTC).
As per CoinMarketCap, the world's third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization toppled its previous record high of $2,477.65 (Nov. 12 high) and rose to a new record of $2,501.29 at 09:44 UTC today. Bitcoin cash (BCH) was last seen trading at $2,350 levels, meaning the 21 percent rally seen in the last 24 hours has pushed the gains since its launch to 316 percent.
Meanwhile, week-on-week, BCH has appreciated 43 percent.
The stellar rally is a part of the broad-based strength witnessed in the alternative currencies since last Tuesday. With bitcoin (large cap) showing signs of fatigue near the $20,000 mark, the rotation to small caps seems to have gathered pace. This is evident from the spike in trading volumes on exchanges offering BCH/BTC pairs.
Also, the investor community may have bought BCH on speculation that integration with payment processor BitPay would open the doors to more widespread adoption (and boost its utility as a payment method). The price chart analysis says the rally in BCH is here to say.
Bitcoin Cash chart
The above chart (prices as per Bitfinex) shows:
BCH has failed to hold above the 261.8 percent Fibonacci extension level of $2,327.11.
The decline from $2,425 (intra-day high) to $2,260 also indicates the first attempt to break above the rising channel hurdle ($2,327.11) has failed.
The 5-day MA and 10-day MA are curled up in favor of the bulls.
The relative strength index (RSI) shows overbought conditions, but is well short of the highs seen in November. Thus, there is enough room for BCH to extend the rally.
View
The area around the upward sloping 10-day MA level of $1,750 is likely to act as a strong support in the short-term.
A close (as per UTC) above $2,327.11 (261.8 percent Fibonacci extension and rising channel hurdle) would open up upside towards $3,000.
That said, the comments on social media show the investor community feels the rally in BCH could fall apart if bitcoin suffers a major setback. While that could be true, the BCH/BTC chart indicates bitcoin cash could still score gains against bitcoin.
BCH/BTC
The above chart shows:
A higher low pattern (BTC 0.068 on Dec. 8 and BTC 0.09 on Dec. 16).
The relative strength index (RSI) is above 50.00 (in the bullish territory), indicates the scope for further gains in BCH/BTC pair.
The 5-day MA and 10-day MA favor the bulls.
View
The pair seems to have bottomed out at BTC 0.068 (Dec. 8 low) and could test the falling channel hurdle of BTC 0.1454.
A close (as per UTC) above BTC 0.1454 would signal bullish falling channel breakout and could yield rally to BTC 0.2225 (Nov. 24 high).
On the downside, only a close below BTC 0.068 (Dec. 8 low) would abort the bullish view.
Racetrack via Shutterstock
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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
Coinbase, the leading platform for buying and selling bitcoin in the United States, said Tuesday that customers can now buy and sell bitcoin cash.
"Sends and receives are available immediately. Buys and sells will be available to all customers once there is sufficient liquidity on GDAX. We anticipate that this will take a few hours," Coinbase said in a blog post Tuesday.
Bitcoin cash split off from the original bitcoin on Aug. 1 after a group of developers decided to try to improve bitcoin transaction speeds and costs. Roger Ver, an outspoken and early bitcoin investor, is a major supporter of bitcoin cash
The majority of developers who supported the original bitcoin failed to reach an agreement this fall on their own upgrade proposal, SegWit2x.
The offshoot currency soared more than 60 percent Tuesday evening ET to all-time highs near $3,540, according to CoinMarketCap. The original bitcoin fell more than 12 percent to near $16,484, according to Coinbase.
Investors in bitcoin at the time of the split should have received an equivalent amount of bitcoin cash, but Coinbase did not immediately do so, and said it would provide support by January. On Tuesday, Coinbase said all customers at the time of the split would have bitcoin cash.
The announcement follows news in the last few days that a large bitcoin payments processor BitPay and major cryptocurrency storage company Blockchain would support bitcoin cash
Coinbase has just added full support for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – meaning you can now send, receive, buy and sell the cryptocurrency. All users will also be credited an amount of Bitcoin Cash equal to their Bitcoin balance during the hard fork that occurred August 1st, 2017.
Bitcoin Cash trading will also be available on GDAX, Coinbase’s institutional-focused exchange.
Update: As of now both Coinbase and GDAX seem to be experiencing intermittent outages and Bitcoin Cash trading has been suspended, so it may take some time until traffic settles down and Bitcoin Cash is actually available for trading.
Immediately after the announcement Bitcoin’s price fell as much as 25% to a low of $14,000, but seems to have stabilized around $16,600 as of writing, which is still down about 10% from a few hours ago.
Bitcoin Cash is up around 50% in the last few hours, trading around $3,300.
As a refresher, Bitcoin Cash was created when Bitcoin “forked” in early August, by a group of developers who wanted to alter Bitcoin’s code so the blockchain could process more transactions at a faster speed, as well as require a much lower fee. When Bitcoin core developers disagreed, a group decided to copy and modify Bitcoin’s code to create Bitcoin cash.
Originally Coinbase said they wouldn’t support Bitcoin Cash – but quickly reversed course on August 3rd to say that customers would be able to withdraw it by January 1st, 2018. However they stopped of short of saying whether or not they’d provide full support and allow it to be bought and sold. So today’s full addition of the digital currency comes as a surprise for anyone who follows the cryptocurrency world.
In a blog post, Coinbase said they considered ” developer and community support, security, stability, market price and trading volume” when deciding to fully support the digital currency. Additionally, they gave some (brief) rational behind the decision:
“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
Coinbase has made it clear they want to support many more digital currencies in the future, so in one sense it should be expected that the’ve added the third largest currency by market cap. But it’s a little more complicated considering there’s some drama behind Bitcoin Cash, mainly in the form of ongoing disagreements between the development teams about discrediting the other’s protocol.
Going forward, the company has a framework that will help guide it in deciding which digital currencies or assets to add next, and have said they expect to add more starting in 2018.
Featured Image: Coinbase
