Bitcoin Cash [BCH] added on Gemini as Bitcoin SV [BSV] moves to the sidelines

More than a year after the Bitcoin [BTC] hard fork that created the Bitcoin Cash [BCH] cryptocurrency, Gemini Exchange has announced that the trading of the fork is now available for its customers. Beginning on December 8th, users can deposit BCH tokens onto the exchange, with trading beginning on December 10th.

Recently, the BCH network itself underwent another hard fork, with two camps, Bitcoin ABC, backed by Bitmain and Jihan Wu, and Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision, headed up by Calvin Ayre and Craig “Faketoshi” Wright. It then split into two coins, with most of the exchange platforms supporting the ABC implementation over the SV one.

Gemini also seemed to go along with this, announcing:

“At this time, we will only be providing support for the Bitcoin ABC network and we will be referring to it as Bitcoin Cash with ticker: BCH. We have added replay protection to all BCH withdrawals from the Gemini platform to ensure transactions are only valid on the Bitcoin ABC blockchain.”

This presents a problem that is difficult for the SV camp to overcome, as BCH is only the 5th coin on the heavily regulated Gemini platform. The exchange only trades Bitcoin, Ethereum [ETH], Litecoin [LTC], Zcash [ZEC]. They also mentioned that any Bitcoin SV or any other unsupported token sent to the Gemini address is “invalid and irrecoverable”.

However, on the brighter side, Gemini has stated that they are continuing to evaluate whether or not to add Bitcoin SV over the “coming weeks and months”, with both withdrawals and trading of the token coming under scrutiny. Eric Winer, the VP of Engineering for Gemini, stated:

“We have worked closely with the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) to obtain approval to offer Bitcoin Cash trading and custody services for our customers, and we are excited to add this cryptocurrency to the Gemini platform.”