Coinbase Announces Support for Bitcoin Forks

Coinbase Announces Support for Bitcoin Forks; Not the Big Announcement Everyone Was Hoping for (a New Coin Being Added), but an Important One None-the-less

Coinbase has come out and eluded to supporting forks, but now they have officially announced support for Bitcoin forks and other forks. See: Adding Support for Bitcoin Forks to Coinbase.^[1]

Although they won’t explicitly say which forks they will support, they have in this announcement and previously expressed that they will support at least withdrawals for stable forks.

This could hint that some forked coins could be added for trading, like Bitcoin Gold or maybe Litecoin Cash, but mostly it means that users will at least have a way to withdraw forked assets that meet their standards.

Of all the forks, the most logical fork to be released to customers (for withdrawal and trading) is Bitcoin Gold (BTG). This is not because the fork is inherently special, but because it was the next big fork following Bitcoin Cash (which was added as promised). It has a history of price action on exchanges, and support for it was announced last year in October around the time of the fork along with announcements of Bitcoin Cash.

That said, any guesses to which forks would be offered for trade or withdrawal would be pure speculation. Coinbase does not announce which assets it will add if any in advance. So no one will know anything about any addition to Coinbase until if and when such things occur.

You can get all the details on how to understand this announcement in the link provided above. Despite this, here is a quick rundown of what you need to know in the form of an excerpt from the official announcement:

Coinbase Custody — will build infrastructure to support future Bitcoin forks. Note: Custody will likely support more forked assets than GDAX or Coinbase for the foreseeable future.

GDAX — will build infrastructure to support the withdrawal of Bitcoin Forks for assets stored on GDAX at the time of the fork. Adding withdrawal support for a bitcoin fork does not mean the asset will also be added for trading. Assets that are listed for trading will be independently evaluated using the Digital Asset Framework.

Coinbase Index Fund — per the index methodology, any forked assets listed for trading on GDAX will be added to the Coinbase Index on a market capitalization weighted basis. Withdrawal-only forked assets, i.e., not added to GDAX for trading, will not be added to the index.

Coinbase — anticipated infrastructure to support the withdrawal of Bitcoin forks for assets held on the platform at the time of the fork. Per our previous guidance, Coinbase will only list forked assets for trading after they are listed for trading GDAX. It’s also worth repeating that listing on GDAX does not guarantee to list on Coinbase.

Coinbase Commerce — customers of Commerce control and manage their private keys, and Coinbase does not control access to forked assets. We have no plans to support any new forked assets in the Commerce UI.

1. Adding Support for Bitcoin Forks to Coinbase. Coinbase.com