Coinbase to delist BSV, the fork of Bitcoin Cash

Coinbase has officially announced to its users that it will delist BSV, the crypto born from the fork of Bitcoin Cash, in January 2024. 

Anyone still holding BSV on Coinbase is asked to withdraw it by 9 January. 

The Crypto BSV

Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision, better known as BSV, is a fork of Bitcoin Cash. 

Bitcoin Cash, or BCH, is itself a fork of the original Bitcoin (BTC). 

Bitcoin Cash was born in August 2017, with the aim of reducing fees by increasing the block size. 

Indeed, the blocks on the BCH blockchain are significantly larger than those of bitcoin, allowing the queue of transactions waiting for confirmation to be cleared much faster. 

In fact, recently the average fee per transaction on BCH has almost always been less than a cent, while on bitcoin it has almost always been over $1. 

Nevertheless, since the proliferation of the Lightning Network, which allows BTC transactions at a negligible cost, BCH has lost some of its attractiveness. 

What’s more, the BSV project has already split off from BCH with another fork in November 2018. The goal has always been the same, namely to greatly increase the block size in order to achieve even smaller transactions. 

Until July, the average fee per single transaction on the BSV blockchain was less than half a cent, although it has risen to three cents in recent months. BCH, on the other hand, peaked at seven cents in recent days.

BSV’s downward parabola: Coinbase delists token from Bitcoin Cash fork

BSV is called Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision because, although it is not bitcoin, it is a project promoted by Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Truth be told, hardly anyone in the crypto community now believes that Wright is the one and only Nakamoto, not least because, many years after he made his claim, he has still not managed to clearly prove that he is, although if he really were, it would be very easy to prove it. 

Furthermore, Bitcoin Cash, from which it originated, has also been on a downward parabola for years, and all of this has led to a widespread loss of interest in BSV. 

BSV made its debut on the crypto markets in November 2018 at a price of around $70. A few days later, it had risen to $100, and by June the following year, it had reached $240. 

The all-time high was reached during the last major bull run, on 16 April 2021, at a price of as much as $491. 

Since then, however, it has done virtually nothing but fall. 

By July 2021, it had fallen to just over $100, and by early 2022, it had fallen below $80. 

After that it got even worse, falling to $50 with the implosion of Earth/Moon, and even to $24 with the bankruptcy of Celsius in June 2022. 

It is true that it has since recovered to around $50 today, but this is even lower than it was in November 2018. 

In the last 24 hours, the total trading volume on all the exchanges mapped was less than $46 million, almost the same as Algorand and less than half of Optimism (OP). 

The downward parabola of BCH

Actually, Bitcoin Cash is not doing so well either. 

It made its debut on the crypto markets in August 2017, at a price of around $400. 

As the penultimate major bull run was underway, it reached its all-time high of over $4,300 at the end of the year. 

Since then it has never been able to return to those levels. In fact, after falling to $80 shortly after the launch of the BSV, it did not return to $1,500 until 2021.

It then fell sharply to $100 following the bankruptcy of Celsius. 

At the beginning of 2023, it also fell below $100, but in June, it rose back to $300 with a mighty spike. 

The current price of $240 is still well below even the starting price in 2017. 

If BSV is at -90% of its highs, BCH is at -94%, even though its current market cap is almost five times its fork. Moreover, BCH’s daily trading volume is more than three times that of BSV. 

Clearly, neither project has anything to do with the real bitcoin.

Coinbase: Reasons for delisting BSV, the Bitcoin Cash fork

Coinbase has not yet officially announced the reasons for delisting BSV. 

It is possible that it is simply a matter of low interest on the part of its customers, as the exchange pairs in BSV on Coinbase have very low volumes. 

For example, the trading volume of the BCH/USD pair is approximately $6 million. While this is much less than the $463 million of the BTC/USD pair, it is still much more than the virtually non-existent BSV pair. 

Given these figures, it seems unlikely that Coinbase will end up delisting BCH as well, not least because the role that Craig Wright has played in promoting the project over the years could also affect the delisting of BSV. 

In the absence of significant trading volumes, the exchange may have decided that it wants nothing more to do with the project, perhaps also to send a clear signal to the crypto community that it does not want to support it in any way. 

Another thing to keep an eye on is the expiration date, as all BSVs still on Coinbase on 10 January 2024 will automatically be sold. Therefore, it is necessary to take them all out first.