Bitcoin.com Accused of Strong-Arm Tactics Over Bitcoin Cash Exchange Listings
Roger Ver’s campaign to promote Bitcoin Cash (BCH) adoption has sparked debate in the cryptocurrency community after the release of an email exchange between crypto trading platform Bity and Bitcoin.com.
Details published by Bity via Reddit on July 25, 2018, reveal a new tactic from the Bitcoin.com team to promote the adoption and usage of BCH, offering crypto exchanges that don’t list the Bitcoin fork as a choice — to list BCH, or face being delisted from the Bitcoin.com “buy Bitcoin” database.
Bity will soon be taken off https://t.co/OAor8jWA1X's exchange listings page. Here's a post from our team explaining why: https://t.co/FSgws6Yaqf
— Bity (@bity) July 24, 2018
Ultimatum Draws Ire
The Bity team published an email exchange between the Swiss cryptocurrency exchange and Bitcoin.com in which the Bitcoin.com team purportedly delivered an ultimatum dictating that the platform must list BCH within 30 days:
“We are making a change on our exchange listing requirements that all listed exchanges must offer Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in order to remain listed on our website. For exchanges that we currently list who do not meet this requirement, they will be removed from the exchange listings page and won’t be offered as an option moving forward unless this requirement is met.”
Bity, as a Switzerland-based cryptocurrency exchange, is unable to identify a use case for BCH in the country, as the local crypto-economy is based primarily around Ethereum and Bitcoin — as outlined in the Bity response to the Bitcoin.com team’s directive:
“In Switzerland there is currently no economy that we are aware of which uses BCH. There are no cases of businesses being built around the direct use of BCH, unlike with Ethereum (ETH) or Bitcoin (BTC) … We have not seen any real use cases in Switzerland or with our user base of BCH that shows potential to be integrated in the future financial system.”
BCH Drama Continues
Bitcoin.com appears to back up the threat of delisting with the statement that the platform is one of the “ top most viewed websites in the cryptocurrency space with millions of views per month.” Bitcoin.com, however, is not the only crypto site that has delisting platforms that don’t conform to their perspective — Bitcoin.com was removed from the CoinMarketCap Bitcoin Page in early May 2018.
Data from the Internet Archive shows Bitcoin.com listed as “website 2” on the CoinMarketCap Bitcoin page, whereas the current page only lists Bitcoin.org as the official Bitcoin website.
Bity, however, is remaining diplomatic regarding Bitcoin.com’s high-pressure BCH listing tactics, stating that the Bity exchange platform is crypto-agnostic:
“We would also like to share that we are crypto agnostic and we understand that things can change in the future. If we see a change in market behaviour towards BCH then we would reconsider offering it on our platform”