In this announcement we clarify the current situation after the Bitcoin network fork and how we are dealing with it at Coinmotion.
In the first day of August the fork of the Bitcoin network happened as expected. In the fork a new coin called Bcash (BCH) was created. This coin is alternatively called Bitcoin Cash but we are using Bcash to make it clear that it is not Bitcoin but rather a new altcoin based on Bitcoin. The fork did not affect the security or functionality of Bitcoin itself in any way.
At the moment Bcash can be traded in only a few exchanges. Deposits and withdrawals are working slowly or still disabled in some of them which has caused important differences in prices between exchanges. So the current prices should be considered only suggestive and may vary strongly as the market becomes more liquid.
In Coinmotion our main focus is the safe storage and management of our customers holdings. This will remain as our priority in the future as well. When processing bitcoin transactions we go through several safety protocols. Our service is fast, secure and solid which has made us a trusted and quickly growing provider of Bitcoin services.
We will allow our customers to access their BCH in the future when we have a sufficiently secure way of doing that. All our customers who had bitcoin stored in Coinmotion before the fork now have equal amount of BCH stored as well. The fork happened after the block 478558.
At the moment we are still considering the best way of making your BCH funds available. First of all, BCH deposits and full trading features are not in our roadmap, however we are monitoring the level of demand. Instead we are currently planning to offer two different options to choose from.
The two options we plan to give our customers are as follows. When we are ready, each customer is presented with a choice.
- We can convert your BCH to BTC automatically and add the amount to your BTC balance.
- We can send the BCH to your own BCH wallet address outside Coinmotion.
Our goal is to make BCH funds available in January 2018 at the latest.
The process for accessing your BCH funds takes time as we don’t have a sufficiently secure process of extracting BCH from our multisig cold storage. Additionally the Bcash network and blockchain are still unstable in our view.
We will handle all Bcash related actions with the same safety standards as with Bitcoin and the fact is that any operations related to our cold storage affects the bitcoins stored there as well, which means that all actions must be done with utmost care and only when it is safe to do so.
We are doing our best to provide you the most secure service for storing your bitcoin assets. This statement stands for any possible forks to come. With any forks we will go through our high standard safety protocols before starting transactions of new coins.
We ask for your patience to let us adapt to the new situation. We will keep you informed in the weeks and months to come. For short updates and commentary please follow our social media updates.
