What a night. Bitcoin Cash inched up on December 18th following a leak of Coinbase’s API which showed BCH, suggesting potential listing.
Then, yesterday, a bull march begun following a low of $2,000, with price surpassing its all-time high of $2,800 in hours, briefly cooling down for some minutes, then shooting up to an all-time high of around $3,700.
Just a few minutes before hand, Coinbase and Gdax tweeted an announcement stating Bitcoin Cash buying and selling was available effectively immediately.
“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,” Coinbase says.
While Bitcoin Cash was rising, bitcoin was falling, with all eyes on the show, sending BCH to twitter’s trends for the first time ever.
Ethereum was falling too at the same time and probably all other crypto, while Bitcoin Cash nearly doubled in a day.
The reception from some Bitcoin Core supporters was one of rage and anger, although why they really care when they all were given an equal amount of BCH for absolutely free, does remain a bit of a mystery.
There are, however, speculations as to whether there was insider trading at Coinbase. There is no evidence to suggest so, except for the price rise before hand.
That could very well be due to the leak of the API, but some say Coinbase should have announced before hand the addition of BCH.
Had they done so, no one can really say it would have been any different. The official announcement itself would have probably been very big news, with shops still probably falling short on popcorn.
Regardless, this is a very big milestone for Bitcoin Cash. The currency is now part of effectively the entire bitcoin ecosystem, including Coinbase and BitPay.
Which means the very first bitcoin chain-split fork can be considered as a resounding success and its supporters were right in believing the chain-split could be a solution to the then intractable scalability debate.
The market now decides and rules above them all, with btc and bch very much on equal footing, so entering 2018 with the greatest trio race on earth.
