decrypt.co
Coinbase is completely removing support for Bitcoin SV (BSV).
America’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange said in a letter to customers who store the asset on the platform that their holdings will be liquidated unless they remove their coins by January 9.
Coinbase delisted Bitcoin spin-off BSV—also known as Satoshi’s Vision—back in 2021 after the blockchain behind the coin suffered what’s known as a “51% attack” and the network became unstable. Coinbase clients have been unable to buy and sell the coin since then, but customers are still able to have it sitting in their wallets on the platform.
“If you fail to withdraw your BSV funds, Coinbase will liquidate any remaining BSV remaining in your Coinbase account,” the notice read, adding that customers would have their BSV converted into another asset. Coinbase confirmed to Decrypt that support for BSV is being deprecated.
Bitcoin SV is a cryptocurrency which was born in November 2018 after Bitcoin Cash—another spin-off from the oldest and biggest cryptocurrency—underwent a hard fork.
It is currently the 53th biggest digital asset, with a market cap of $967 million, according to CoinGecko.
Hard forks occur when a blockchain splits in two—sometimes in an orderly fashion as a result of an upgrade, other times when the developers of the network can’t agree on the blockchain’s future and forcibly splinter the chain.
There have been many Bitcoin forks and, as a result, lots of alternative Bitcoins exist. BSV is one of the biggest and well-known. That’s largely because its main supporter is the controversial Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who claims without evidence to be the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Those working on BSV call the asset “the original Bitcoin,” but it remains a controversial cryptocurrency and has been delisted from a number of major exchanges.
Wright has threatened those who say he is not Satoshi with lawsuits, and several prominent exchanges, such as Kraken, responded to those threats by delisting BSV years ago.