Day: August 3, 2017

The post How to Claim Your Bitcoin Cash and Sell it for Bitcoin (TREZOR, Ledger, Electrum) appeared first on 99 Bitcoins.

Warning: this guide reveals the exact method the author used to claim free Bitcoin CasH and exchange it for Bitcoin on the 2nd of August. While every reasonable effort has been made to ensure complete and accurate information, the author can’t guarantee a successful outcome for those following this method. Waiting for better documented methods […]

GDAX has announced that it will launch support for the breakaway cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash sometime later this year.

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has reversed its decision to support bitcoin cash. The company now plans to allow customers to withdraw their new cryptocurrency by January 1, 2018.

Also read: Coinbase Customers Could Instigate Class Action Lawsuit Over Bitcoin Cash

Coinbase on Thursday announced a change of plans regarding its support for bitcoin cash (BCC, BCH), the new cryptocurrency resulting from the August 1 hard fork. The exchange wrote:

We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time. Once supported, customers will be able to withdraw bitcoin cash.

Meanwhile, the company claims that both bitcoin and BCC are safely stored and customers with bitcoin balances at the time of the fork “now have an equal quantity of bitcoin cash stored by Coinbase.” Its exchange GDAX also made a similar announcement.

Previously, Coinbase said that it would not support bitcoin cash. “We have no plans to support the Bitcoin Cash fork,” the exchange wrote on July 27, citing the difficulty in predicting BCC’s future market value. “Customers will not have access to, or be able to withdraw, bitcoin cash (BCC).”

However, after the fork, Coinbase came under fire for its decision as users demanded access to their new cryptocurrency. “Give us our BCC!!!,” wrote a Twitter user. While Coinbase advised customers to transfer funds away from the exchange to access BCC, one user tweeted, “transfer of funds were halted… I guess if Coinbase doesn’t hand them out to their rightful owners, lawsuits might happen quick.” Recently, news.Bitcoin.com reported that Coinbase customers could instigate a class action lawsuit over the company’s decision to not distribute the new cryptocurrency.

With today’s announcement, Coinbase detailed that its decision to support BCC was based on various factors such as network security, customer demand, trading volumes and regulatory considerations. However, some users are unhappy with the long wait. “January 2018 is too long,” one tweeted. “I smell a class action law suit headed your way. You are basically holding client funds hostage,” was a comment in response to the company’s blog post.

What do you think of Coinbase’s delay in distributing bitcoin cash? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Coinbase

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The post Coinbase Reverses – Plans to Allow Bitcoin Cash Withdrawals in January 2018 appeared first on Bitcoin News.

India’s securities markets watchdog has announced that it will explore blockchain for potential applications to its regulatory oversight processes.

Check the price analysis for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin

Check the price analysis for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin

Users of cryptocurrency exchanges often fall victim to accounts getting hacked, stolen, or abused. We have seen dozens of such stories ever since the creation of Bitcoin. In most cases, such issues have arisen due to people failing to take the necessary account security precautions. One user recently lost US$43,000 worth of Litecoin on Kraken and is not too pleased with the way the exchange has handled things.

Exchanges Have to Protect Customer Funds Better

Every time a story such as this one comes to light, there are two sides to be taken into account. This particular Kraken user usually holds his coins off exchanges unless absolutely necessary, but admitted he did not take enough precautions in this case. Indeed, the one time he slipped up, things went sour very quickly. He ended up losing US$43,000 worth of Litecoin, which is a significant amount.

According to the user, he moved his LTC funds to Kraken last Friday. The goal was to have the funds available on an exchange pending the Bitcoin Cash fork playing out. If a massive demand were to arise for LTC, there would be good profit to be made. Unfortunately for him, Litecoin’s price was not at all affected by the BCH launch and its value has remained virtually the same for several days now.

Transferring these coins to Kraken may have been the user’s worst decision in recent memory as well, as his funds had been stolen by Sunday afternoon. Not setting up two-factor authentication was a very bad idea, as everyone should enable 2FA on exchange accounts regardless of how often they use them. It is an extra layer of defense against unauthorized account access. It is not a foolproof solution by any means, but there is no reason whatsoever not to use it.

Interestingly enough, the user received an “invalid account” error when logging into Kraken on Sunday. It appears someone had successfully compromised his email address, reset his Kraken password, and even changed the email address altogether. It is incredibly strange to learn that exchanges allow users to change their email address while there is an active balance in an account. Doing so without requiring additional identity verification is pretty unusual, yet Kraken seemingly has no problem with this.

The user in question managed to track down the address to which the funds were sent, and by that time most of his Litecoins had already been sold. Hackers always aim to get their currency and cash it out as quickly as possible. Considering that Litecoin, like Bitcoin, has no privacy or anonymity traits nor any coin mixers, it should not be too hard for law enforcement officials to track the hacker down — that is, assuming they will be inclined to do so.

While it is true that the Kraken user should be blamed for lackluster account security, the exchange should be scrutinized as well. Changing an email address on any account without verification is bad enough. Allowing someone with a foreign IP to do so when there is money in the wallet at the time is absolutely unacceptable. It is hard to fault the company for letting this user allow his account to become compromised, yet its role in the transfer of funds raised a lot of questions as things unfolded. In the end, users are always responsible for securing their exchange accounts.

Bitfinex has enabled margin trading of Bitcoin Cash on its platform.

Also read: Indian Government May Take Immediate Steps to Stop Bitcoin Use 

Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex tweeted on Thursday that it has enabled margin trading for Bitcoin Cash (BCH). BCH is the new cryptocurrency resulting from the August 1 hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. The exchange explained that it is using BCH as the ticker symbol and “Bcash” as the descriptive name “to avoid confusion with bitcoin.” However, “BCH will not be eligible as collateral for margin positions,” it previously announced.

Thursday’s announcement came after Bitfinex started trading BCH/USD, BCH/BTC and BCH/ETH the previous day.

On August 1, the exchange began crediting customers with the new cryptocurrency, after the first BCH block was mined. However, while their customers were expecting to be credited 1 BCH per 1 bitcoin held at the time of the fork, they complained about receiving 15% less BCH.

In calculating BCH distribution, Bitfinex explained that it took into account margin positions which could lead to a surplus or a deficit of BCH at the exchange. For example, margin longs in BTC/USD will not receive BCH while margin shorts in BTC/USD will not pay BCH. Consequently, the exchange said, “we will be resolving this discrepancy in the form of a socialized distribution coefficient.” On August 2, it revealed that the final coefficient used for distributing BCH was 0.8539.

However, Bitcoin Cash deposits and withdrawals are still unavailable, according to some users who tweeted the screenshot shown below.

What do you think of Bitfinex enabling margin trading for BCH? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Twitter

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post Bitfinex Enables Bitcoin Cash Margin Trading appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Cash network is unstable and slow, price could crash once exchanges enable deposits