Unfortunately, the vast majority of people didn't have a chance to sell at the highs on Day 1. Only people with coins on exchanges like HitBTC and Bittrex were able to do that (and even among them, there wasn't much volume).


I guess it plays out the vision of the Bitcoin Unlimited folks. In some way, it is a network split, but technically, they are actually just forking off onto another network. It's a speculative investment vehicle like any other altcoin.

As an aside: Unless my calculations are wrong, difficulty on Bitcoin Cash just dropped 36%. My brain is too fried right now to run the numbers, but I'm guessing it is getting close to being profitable to mine (if not already).

There's a lot of money to be made from the trading fees, sure. I figured that the reason Poloniex might not want to add it at first was that their major markets all trade against BTC. So any potentially severe network split or confusion around what "BTC" is threatens them from a custodial and legal standpoint. I think now that it's pretty clear that BCC can't overtake BTC, they are fine with adding the new market.

Poloniex supported ETC pretty much instantly, actually. Within a day, I believe, and they definitely encouraged other exchanges to add it by doing so. I'm surprised that with all these exchanges supporting BCC, and with the price still managing to stay in the $200s, that Bitcoin continues to rally to new highs. Such interesting action. I would have thought more people would be scared by a network split (even if a small one). I was wrong yet again it seems.

The truth is, you will hear such complaints about any exchange. They are usually resolved in time, but people who publicly lodged complaints often don't return to say that the issues were resolved. Coinbase is slow, but they have massive legal liabilities and are tightly regulated. They are unlikely to take your money and run like some other exchanges.

One exception here is Poloniex. They have continued to have lots of complaints about stuck withdrawals and deposits not being credited going back several months. The situation doesn't seem to be improving, so I would steer clear of Polo....

Judging by the 66k BTC wallets that were moved, and the tagged BTC-e ETH wallet, I'm guessing most of the funds were indeed in cold storage. What we don't know is how much exposure they have to frozen fiat funds (they announced that Mayzus froze their accounts). And even if they still have access to most of their fiat funds (if they were well-hidden through various shell companies in less-US-friendly regions), they would have a very hard time moving any of that to customers. So, even if refunds happen, who knows how it would work?

They are definitely in possession of user data. They confirmed that they have access to their databases and wallets. The FBI did seize servers that contained those, but the exchange kept back-ups, and the wallets should have been encrypted.

Unfortunately, Shapeshift's service doesn't support fiat currencies (which is also one of the reasons they can operate as they do). There are times when you can't hedge in altcoins; when bitcoin is dropping and altcoins are dropping harder, you need to find an exchange to hedge the fiat value of your coins. But increasingly, it seems like it's better to just weather the storm and hold for the most part.


This seems more and more important now. If an exchange does business with US customers, they need to be licensed as an MSB and do AML/KYC. Otherwise there is risk of FBI seizure...

That seems doubtful. They are backed by huge VC money that seems willing to bail them out of any potentially dubious legal situation. The biggest problem is probably still a large influx of new customers on a badly-scaled exchange.

It seems like the best way to get your support ticket answered these days is to start a thread on Reddit (Bitcoinmarkets is probably best). I've seen many issues get solved quickly that way. It's pretty pathetic, but if it works, why not?

I suppose it makes sense if you can take a big piece of the total market share. With the initial rush to dump, there is a lot of volume to potentially soak up. I'm sure this is why Bitfinex announced support for this alt. They didn't want Kraken taking the volume.

Bitfinex has other reasons to support it. They need to remain relevant and keep volumes up. They have been silent about their complete inability to transfer fiat money in or out of the exchange, so they are focusing on new alt markets and gimmicks. Now "ethfinex": https://www.bitfinex.com/ethfinex

Wasn't Ross Ulbricht charged with money laundering? This is just the first time that a large bitcoin exchange has been targeted for it. I sympathize less with funds on darknet markets getting seized, since users should know that this is always a risk. But on a long-running public bitcoin exchange? A lot of legitimate traders and miners will be devastated by this. I always thought of 3rd party exchange risk as risk of hacking or exit scam. The FBI targeting legitimate exchanges brings all new risks to trading crypto...

Excellent Craig Wright impression, by the way.

I just find it odd is all. With any major FBI takedown I've ever seen, the headline is the amount of funds seized. Take the Alphabay indictment/press release, for instance. This was nothing like that, and BTC-e was one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world!

Just makes me wonder if the FBI screwed up and thought they had access to more funds than they did.

Why $3800? The way I see it, we've now been consolidating for months beneath the highs. If we go to new ATHs after all this accumulation, it doesn't make sense for price to make such a short impulse only into the $3000s. I'm thinking $4000-6500 minimum on the next wave up.

However, I'm not sold on any price prediction right now, either. Everyone I talk to seems very bullish, and no one is taking the potential network split effect of BTC/BCC seriously. I think we could continue to see further congestion for months, or even a downtrend, as we start to approach the November hard fork threat.

There's always some FUD to ponder in Bitcoin!

It'll be a while. Once atomic cross-chain swaps become tenable, a lot of altcoin/BTC trading can be taken off centralized exchanges. I can't wait for that. I lost some alts (fiat as well) on BTC-e. It was always the best litecoin exchange. Live and learn.

So I'm with you...... but I wonder how many years out we are from a decentralized exchange with good enough liquidity and fast enough trading engine to compete with centralized exchanges.

I think it's more so that they are extremely cautious. And legally, their top priority is retaining secure custody of customer bitcoins. BCH is an afterthought compared to that.

It was similar for Ethereum Classic. They dragged their feet at first, saying they wouldn't support. Eventually they agreed to pay users their ETC, but it took several months. It sucks for customers, but that's the long and short of it when it comes to Coinbase/GDAX.

It's probably a matter of time. They (along with Okpay, who is now owned by Mayzus) have been processing BTC-e's US and Europe-facing fiat withdrawals for several years. I mean, if the Feds are calling the exchange itself a money laundering operation, what does that say about its primary payment processor?

This is all very bizarre given that there is still no word from the US government about funds being seized. Did they get so little that they were embarrassed to mention it? Or do they have reason not to make it public?

BCC isn't Bitcoin. People with bitcoins on deposit aren't entitled to anything, since they don't control the private keys.

This seems like a real longshot legally. Put it this way: I could make a fork of Bitcoin right now. If I have some BTC on Coinbase, I can sue them for not paying me coins on my fork, too? Of course not!

The BCC fork was totally rushed. It was reasonable for Coinbase not to pay out on that timeframe. And they gave people plenty of warning, too.

Give it time. One of the reasons exchanges aren't opening trading and require so many confirmations for BCC is the high difficulty vs. hash rate. That creates double spend risk.

The Bitcoin Cash chain just adjusted difficulty downwards by 20%, so block time issues should start improving now. Hopefully we'll see some more price volatility now.

This isn't just any temporary downage. They were taken down by the FEDS. Even in the best case scenario, where most of their funds are intact and there is the slightest chance of refunds to customers, the last thing they can do is give away their current plans. Make no mistake; they are hiding from the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world.

Well, that's a matter of branding. I mean, "surpasses" in what sense? Cumulative proof of work? Network activity?

Certainly, one can fork Bitcoin's code and try to call it Bitcoin, and maybe a bunch of people will follow. But inevitably, that will be a schism, not a "surpassing" of Bitcoin. I think it's much more likely that there would be multiple viable chains vying for the title of "Bitcoin" than for something like Bitcoin Cash to dominate outright.

Can anyone comment on when difficulty will readjust? I heard the Bcash devs adjusted the difficulty algorithm, but I'm too much of a layman to see it in the code. 3 hours without a block -- ouch.

I think things will look much more interesting once difficulty readjusts on Bcash. Then it'll be "business as usual" on both chains, and we can see a more efficient market develop. For now, these illiquid markets don't mean much.

This has all the hallmarks of the Ethereum Classic fork. Everyone plans to dump (as soon as exchanges are functioning normally and the Bcash chain retargets difficulty (so people can actually move their coins quickly).

In time, I think Bcash might still be around, though. Just like ETC.