Why Did Japan’s SBI Just Delist Bitcoin Cash? Potential Factors

SBI Virtual Currencies has reportedly delisted Bitcoin Cash (BCH) pairs from its trading platform.

The Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange today issued a notice in which it clarified the basis of removing BCH-enabled instruments. It explained that the Bitcoin Cash as a blockchain project had deviated from its core business philosophy. SBI added that Bitcoin Cash in its current version was an unsuitable listing for them, which could put their customers’ investment security at risk.

SBI Virtual Currency, one of licensed exchanges in Japan, decides to delist BCH（ABC）suddenly, blaming its price decline and a lack of security because of that. interesting move. Many wonder if it's because of its close relationship with nchain and BSVhttps://t.co/1LOCxhF8yP — Koji Higashi (@Coin_and_Peace) April 16, 2019

“The BCH’s market capitalization has decreased significantly,” SBI wrote, adding that BCH blockchain was vulnerable to 51-percent attacks following its hard fork in November 2018. The exchange clarified that Bitcoin Cash’s profile didn’t fit well with the criteria mentioned in Article 9, Paragraph 1 of Japan’s crypto regulation.

“It is impossible to completely deny the possibility that the price will decline significantly due to further hard forking,” the notice added.

BSV Delisting Behind SBI’s Decision?

SBI’s announcement came at the time when cryptocurrency exchanges are in the process of delisting Bitcoin Cash’s forked version Bitcoin SV (BSV). A social media movement against the BSV creator, Dr. Craig S Wright, led Binance, ShapeShift, and Blockchain to stop offering BSV-enabled services. In the meantime, Kraken conducted a public poll to understand whether or not it should also follow suit and delist BSV.

It was improbable for an exchange to delist Bitcoin Cash, however, considering the coin was already trading on leading cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, for close to two years. The Bitcoin Cash hard fork SBI referred to had taken place six months back. The BCH price and market cap had impressively recovered ever since and served no threats as mentioned in the SBI notice. That leaves the Japanese cryptocurrency community with questions like why SBI waited for six-months to delist BCH. And why did their announcement came at the time when other exchanges were delisting BSV.

yup that was already known but the timing of the announcement was a bit interesting — Koji Higashi (@Coin_and_Peace) April 16, 2019

Bitcoin analyst Koji Higashi believed that SBI’s decision has to do with Bitcoin Cash’s close proximity with Dr. Wright’s nChain and Bitcoin SV project. Nevertheless, the two groups have been at each other throats ever since the hard forking event took place in November. Dr. Wright event threatened to launch a 51-percent attack on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

It could be possible that Bitcoin Cash failed the SBI’s metric test when it came to protecting itself against external threats. Hence, a delisting ensued.

Withdrawal Process

SBI stated that users can sell their BCH holdings since by the end of this April. The exchange added that it would transfer the rest of the BCH tokens to a dedicated hardware wallet. Users will be able to withdraw their funds from the wallet until June this year.

SBI has suspended BCH transactions taking place on its trading platform.