Bitfinex Follows Poloniex Exchange’s Lead to Offer Pre-Fork BCH Token Trading for Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is getting closer and closer to their hard fork, which is scheduled for November 15^th. The fork, based on the current information, is leading to two separate chains, which are Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV.

In the most recent annoucement from Bitfinex, the company has ultimately decided to offer trading for Bitcoin Cash before this fork happens.

According to their annoucement, which is found on their official website, the company said, “To prevent any risk of manipulation and hence to maintain a healthy market we have decided to use the Chain Split Tokens (CST) approach to govern this particular event.”

The new CSTs will make it possible to trade the tokens that come from the fork, labeling them as “BAB” for the ABC implementation, and “BSV” for the SV implementation.

We are introducing new Chain Split Tokens (CSTs) that will allow traders to trade the anticipated Bitcoin Cash tokens resulting from the Bitcoin Cash hard fork implementations "ABC" and "SV" on November 15, 2018.https://t.co/gA3pai4YL8

— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) November 13, 2018

The CSTs will be eligible for trading against both USD and BTC pairs, though margin trading will not be an option. The annoucement notes,

“These CSTs will provide pricing continuity through the Snapshot Event. After the Snapshot Event, these pre-event CSTs will convert automatically to the post-event on-chain tokens. We will use the symbol “BAB” for Bitcoin Cash ABC and symbol “BSV” for Bitcoin Cash SV to designate the post-event on-chain tokens.”

Bitfinex plans to “take a snapshot” for the balances and positions of all Bitcoin Cash at the time of the hard fork. Everything will be frozen at that point, and this standstill will remain in effect “until the BAB and BSV accounting can be adequately prepared and addressed.” Though Bitfinex sees the process as going by quickly, they can’t assure consumers that the process will happen immediately.

If a user ends up with a negative balance after borrowing Bitcoin Cash around the time of the fork, they

“will need to buy back into BAB and BSV before 31 December 2018 or risk having the system do it for them.”

There is a chance that the company will delist the two tokens after the negative balances have been resolved.

Concluding, the annoucement adds, “While we want to make such forks available to our customers, our limited and temporary support for them is not and should not be construed as support for any particular project.”

As of 8:00am PST on November 13^th, Bitcoin Cash is presently trading at $522.48, though it has dropped by $1.09% so far. Presently, the market cap has reached $9,120,495,786.