<story><title>Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue</title><url>http://fortune.com/2017/08/02/bitcoin-cash-lawsuit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dsacco</author><text>Regardless of the price, an exchange cannot seize customer assets by giving them 10 days notice for withdrawal. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if it&amp;#x27;s a separate currency - we have things resembling this in public markets, like stock splits. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if everyone can fork the cryptocurrency, that doesn&amp;#x27;t change the principle of a customer&amp;#x27;s asset.&lt;p&gt;What Coinbase should have done is this:&lt;p&gt;1. Stood their ground on not supporting trading for the cryptocurrency, because they are under no obligation to develop new features.&lt;p&gt;2. Implemented a system to disburse the forked currency to customers if needed.&lt;p&gt;3. Implemented an explicit trigger price for acknowledging the new currency, which would function for potential forks of currencies already supported on the platform. If the currency does not pass a specific (very low, far lower than $700) mark, they don&amp;#x27;t disburse it, but if it does, they immediately support disbursal to anyone who requests it.&lt;p&gt;The organic state of a cryptocurrency fork is that all extant holders receive &lt;i&gt;a new asset&lt;/i&gt;, which may or may not be worth anything. A company cannot seize that asset without consideration. If the price of the currency subsequently crashes, then it crashes; that does not change the rights of a customer to their assets, which cannot be signed away with an email sent out 10 days before the event.</text></item><item><author>bdcravens</author><text>Big point to remember: the current high price is artificial. There are only a few exchanges selling BCH, and they aren&amp;#x27;t accepting deposits. The only sellers are those who had BTC there prior to August 1. So it&amp;#x27;s a sellers market. There&amp;#x27;s a ton of demand to sell. Once those deposits are enabled, you&amp;#x27;ll see a flood of dumping, and the price will crash.&lt;p&gt;So let&amp;#x27;s say Coinbase allows BCH withdrawals. Unless they enabled trading it (which they didn&amp;#x27;t with ETC when ETH forked), all those Coinbasers wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to sell anyways. They&amp;#x27;d be waiting like everyone else, so that $700 price wouldn&amp;#x27;t matter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>modeless</author><text>Where do you draw the line though? Anyone can invent new tokens and grant them to bitcoin holders; should Coinbase be required to support every one?&lt;p&gt;This is not a hypothetical question. I particpated in two airdrops this year, Stellar and Byteball. I immediately sold the airdropped tokens and increased my bitcoin holdings by 3%. But I don&amp;#x27;t think Coinbase should be required to support Stellar or Byteball just because they did airdrops to Bitcoin holders.&lt;p&gt;Byteball in particular seems like just some guy&amp;#x27;s random project and only has value because of the current investment bubble in anything that looks like a cryptocurrency. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t trust it to be secure or work properly. What if Byteball is just a huge scam, and the creator can secretly mint tokens at will? Now Coinbase is participating in a scam!</text></comment>
<story><title>Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue</title><url>http://fortune.com/2017/08/02/bitcoin-cash-lawsuit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dsacco</author><text>Regardless of the price, an exchange cannot seize customer assets by giving them 10 days notice for withdrawal. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if it&amp;#x27;s a separate currency - we have things resembling this in public markets, like stock splits. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if everyone can fork the cryptocurrency, that doesn&amp;#x27;t change the principle of a customer&amp;#x27;s asset.&lt;p&gt;What Coinbase should have done is this:&lt;p&gt;1. Stood their ground on not supporting trading for the cryptocurrency, because they are under no obligation to develop new features.&lt;p&gt;2. Implemented a system to disburse the forked currency to customers if needed.&lt;p&gt;3. Implemented an explicit trigger price for acknowledging the new currency, which would function for potential forks of currencies already supported on the platform. If the currency does not pass a specific (very low, far lower than $700) mark, they don&amp;#x27;t disburse it, but if it does, they immediately support disbursal to anyone who requests it.&lt;p&gt;The organic state of a cryptocurrency fork is that all extant holders receive &lt;i&gt;a new asset&lt;/i&gt;, which may or may not be worth anything. A company cannot seize that asset without consideration. If the price of the currency subsequently crashes, then it crashes; that does not change the rights of a customer to their assets, which cannot be signed away with an email sent out 10 days before the event.</text></item><item><author>bdcravens</author><text>Big point to remember: the current high price is artificial. There are only a few exchanges selling BCH, and they aren&amp;#x27;t accepting deposits. The only sellers are those who had BTC there prior to August 1. So it&amp;#x27;s a sellers market. There&amp;#x27;s a ton of demand to sell. Once those deposits are enabled, you&amp;#x27;ll see a flood of dumping, and the price will crash.&lt;p&gt;So let&amp;#x27;s say Coinbase allows BCH withdrawals. Unless they enabled trading it (which they didn&amp;#x27;t with ETC when ETH forked), all those Coinbasers wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to sell anyways. They&amp;#x27;d be waiting like everyone else, so that $700 price wouldn&amp;#x27;t matter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; Regardless of the price, an exchange cannot seize customer assets by giving them 10 days notice for withdrawal.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, but the &lt;i&gt;legal&lt;/i&gt; question is whether a protocol fork &lt;i&gt;as a matter of law&lt;/i&gt; creates a new asset owned by the customer, creates a new asset owned by whoever controls the wallet keys, or merely creates an opportunity which someone who controls wallet keys may exploit to generate a new asset by participating in the ecosystem on the new side of the fork.&lt;p&gt;(Fundamentally, this also lays near the question of legal ownership of Bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency in general and what specifically is “owned” when one owns them.)</text></comment>