Even the exchanges that trading is occuring on aren't necessarily allowing users to withdraw their BCC/BCH yet. Kraken say deposits and withdrawals may not be available for several days: https://twitter.com/krakenfx/status/892689436109971456 Not sure about ViaBTC and Bittrex.

There's something I don't quite get (being a cryptocurrency newbie). Why can coinbase users not simply import their private key into some other wallet that supports both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash?

My understanding is that Bitcoin Cash recognises the old Bitcoin blockchain as their own up to the point of the fork. So as of Aug 1st all Bitcoin balances are Bitcoin Cash balances as well. Or is that not how it works?

Coinbase users don't have a private key for their Coinbase balance. They have an account with Coinbase, and Coinbase has their own private keys for their internal wallets. When you withdraw money from Coinbase, you're asking them to use their private keys to sign a transaction sending bitcoins to an address you specify.

What users could have done was withdraw their Coinbase balance into their own wallet, then they'd have coins on both forks. This had to be done before the fork happened, though. Now that it has, anyone whose coins were in Coinbase at the time of the fork is at the mercy of Coinbase.

Worth mentioning that they notified users before the fork.

Oh, I see. That's unfortunate. Thanks for explaining.

Users of coinbase have no real right to complain because they have given up their control of their bit coin when they sign up for coin base. Unless this wasn't made clear by coin base at the beginning, i don't see how the law suit has any legs.

They're giving up control of their bitcoin for specific purposes. Coinbase can't just do whatever they feel like with it, any more than your bank can one day just declare "Hey, we decided to keep all of your deposits, FOAD, thanks."

may be i'm misunderstanding the nature of the bitcoin fork, but i see it the same as owning foreign currency. IF you banked some US dollars, you can't turn around and say you'd like to get it back out as Euros without paying some kind of exchange rate.

And if the price of BCC were to crash to single digit USD in a week it takes for Coinbase to come to a decision then the customers would have lost a fortune.

They already came to a decision. They told people who wanted BCC to withdraw their coins before August 1st. Everyone who wanted BCC already has them.

I think an argument against that is that 10 days is a pretty short deadline to act to prevent a potentially large financial loss. Especially if you were on vacation, not following the news about bitcoin, etc.

Coinbase doesn't have to support trading BCC, they can simply provide a withdrawal function so people can claim their BCC and move on with their lives. Their decision to ignore it entirely is going to get them sued and it's going to cost them.

Does the stock market offer do-overs if there is a significant move against you while you're on vacation?

Would Coinbase normally be held accountable for a significant move in Bitcoin against you while you're on vacation?

Coinbase isn't a company to secure your Bitcoins against the value of the dollar, it's a company that stores Bitcoins and facilitates transactions.

No, because exchanges in public markets never get to this point. Unless you're margin called, you're not put into a position where you forfeit your assets. Moreover that's still not an ultimatum where value simply goes from the customer to the exchange without any consideration - it occurs because the assets you borrowed from the exchange in the first place have been lost or exposed to great risk.

This is not about a do over, it's about the ultimatum being reasonable. If an exchange declared that you had 10 days to withdraw funds issued by, say, dividends, or you'd simply lose those funds with no consideration or equitable exchange, it would be sued (and successfully so).

Coinbase did not (and does not) need to allow trading in order to disburse the forked currency to existing customers.

No, what I'm saying is by refusing to allow withdrawal of the "new" coins, they put themselves in the position to be sued because clients lose potentially a lot of free money.

It's an opportunity cost: if I missed out on some big trades while the price was high due to their decision to withhold the keys, I'm rightfully annoyed by it.

Of course leaving legality out of it, it'd also just be a smart thing to do because it makes their customers happy and maintains goodwill. Coinbase is fairly respected in the crypto space and making their customers happy during a turbulent period can only be good for them in the long run.

They will capitulate eventually. Same thing happened with ETH/ETC.

> No, what I'm saying is by refusing to allow withdrawal of the "new" coins, they put themselves in the position to be sued because clients lose potentially a lot of free money.

Coinbase is a company that handles people's Bitcoin (and a couple other currencies). Coinbase never made any promises to support other currencies that copy Bitcoin's balances or are otherwise awarded to Bitcoin users. Bitcoin Cash isn't mentioned or promised in any of Coinbase's advertising materials. Handling of Bitcoin Cash is a service that Coinbase has never claimed to offer.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I get what you're saying but it doesn't really matter. If they don't want to lose a lot of customers (and revenue) they'll offer a withdrawal option.

... Giving a few days to do it. Ignoring withdrawal limits the customers cannot raise.

Customers could have sold their BTC for USD at any time and just held USD until after the fork. There isn't any functional difference between holding USD pre-fork or holding both BTC and BCH post-fork.

That's wrong. If I hold 1 BTC, I'll have 1 BTC and 1 BCH after the fork. If I sell for the equivalent of 1 BTC in USD (say, $2500), I'll have $2500 after the fork, instead of $2500+$700 (price of 1 BTC + price of 1 BCH)

That doesn't resemble anything like the business practices of mature exchanges. The best analogy I can think of offhand is a stock split or (more frequently) a dividend. An exchange could not in any universe give its customers 10 days to withdraw its funds or agree to forfeiture.

You don't just get to take customer assets because you sent out an email and gave them 10 days. This is why we have the concept of consideration in the first place.

There are actually some somewhat analogous situations in the US listed equity options markets. Options are typically adjusted for corporate actions other than regular dividends. However, special dividends are only adjusted for if they are more than 12.5 cents per share. And for voluntary corporate actions the options are adjusted according to whatever would happen to a non-electing shareholder. So if there's an exchange or tender offer, or a merger with electable form of payment, you have to exercise your options ahead of the ex date in order to benefit.

I think that's a really good point, but I'm still going to contest it.

Options are derivatives, so they're different from cryptocurrencies, which are themselves analogous to equities. An option inherently has a date of expiration, whereas a cryptocurrency (even a fork) does not intrinsically have such a thing, and with an option you do not own the underlying unless you choose to exercise.

I bet it comes down to not wanting to go through the same thing for every fork that gains a little bit of momentum.

If their accounting is competent they can anyway trivially award the correct amount of BCH at any later date (because they'd be able to determine exactly how many BTC each customer had at any given moment).

That's not nice for customers that want to trade now, but people are hardly forever screwed if BCH becomes the new thing.