Coinbase Isn’t Supporting Ethereum Classic, Yet
Digital currency exchange Coinbase has revealed its stance with the Ethereum hard fork, stating that it has no plans to support Ethereum Classic, the spin-off blockchain based on the consensus and protocols of the original Ethereum blockchain.
In an announcement today, bitcoin and ether exchange Coinbase has revealed that its recently launched support for ether, the token currency of the Ethereum blockchain only extends to ETH and not ETC, or Ethereum Classic.
Coinbase launched support for ETH following last week’s hard fork and will continue to support “transactions and trading in ETH – not ETC”, the statement read.
Furthermore, the announcement revealed that there is no plan in the current time to support ETC, which has seen increased market activity since its launch last week. A statement read:
At this time, Coinbase has no plans to support ETC, although we will continue to monitor the situation and evaluate customer demand.
The exchange also urged users not to send ETC to their Coinbase accounts.
Coinbase’s trading platform, recently unveiled as the Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX), will also continue to support trading and withdraws for the ETH network, with no current support for ETC.
A statement from GDAX today underlined that the trading platform was not “philosophically opposed to any particular hard fork or coin.” In past remarks, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam has, via social media , indicated that he was against the hard fork.
Notably, Ehrsam has also stated that Ethereum was “ahead of Bitcoin in many ways,” in a public statement prior to the DAO attack and the subsequent hard fork.
Furthermore, GDAX is also open to the idea of adding support for ETC, with such a decision entirely contingent on customer demand.
“We will continue to monitor the situation and evalutate customer demand for new digital assets to add to the platform,” the statement added.
Ethereum Classic is being developed by a group of members within the Ethereum community who chose to stick with the Ethereum blockchain’s original consensus. The project was announced last week. While it did not garner much attention at the onset, the decision to add support to the Ethereum Classic blockchain by Poloniex – ether’s largest exchange – this past weekend has put the spotlight again on Ethereum during what is currently a contentious period.
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