OKCoin delists two Bitcoin forks over ‘malicious misinformation’ campaign

While the original Bitcoin rallies past a $1 trillion dollar marketcap, two forks of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency have instead lost a source of liquidity as crypto exchange OKCoin delists BSV and BCH. 

In a blog post today, OKCoin CEO Hong Fang explained the decision to delist as one focused on protecting investors from a “malicious misinformation war.”

Fang noted that the exhcange regularly reviews listed assets across a variety of metrics, “including ecosystem development and ethos” as well as “ethical or reputational red flags,” and that the two forks were removed following the most recent review. Given the “unique history and context,” however, the Fang writes that the company felt compelled to explain their decision.

“When the news hit that Craig Wright — the infamous self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin and BSV supporter — was taking actions to enforce copyright claims on the Bitcoin white paper, we found ourselves facing a very uncomfortable dilemma,” the post read.

While Fang specified that the company believes “Bitcoin is an open software,” and both disagreements between individuals and hard forks are permitted in an open software context, ultimately “we are just having a hard time ignoring the malicious misinformation war waged by Craig Wright and other high-profile members of [the BCH and BSV] communities.”

“We view both factors as very destructive to Bitcoin — the cornerstone layer of our industry. Before we have a better way to both separate BSV from Wright’s attack on the open-source community, and to differentiate these two derivative protocols from the original Bitcoin on our platform, we feel more comfortable with removing them,” Fang concluded.

According to Coingecko, OKCoin is incorporated in the United States and trades $50 million daily, with BTC/USD accounting for 70% of that volume. Leading up to the announcement, BSV only accounted for $30,000 in volume and BCH $150,000, per Coingecko, both in the lower range of the 32 assets OKCoin offers. 

BCH has had an up-and-down year leading into the delisting. Earlier in the month, Dogecoin’s wild price surge pushed BCH out of the list of top-10 assets by marketcap, though in December of last year entrepreneur Kim Dotcom threw his weight behind the Bitcoin fork, calling a $3,000 price target per coin. BCH is up 70% on the year to $714.

BSV has had a rougher year by comparison, trading down 21% to $241. The coin has had some positive press recently, however: following an appearance by Jimmy Nguyen on Fox Business, some have speculated that the network booked the BSV advocate by mistake when trying to bring in an expert on the original Bitcoin.