It is not entirely surprising to learn Poloniex has finally come around on Bitcoin Cash. More specifically, the company has received quite a bit of backlash over their attitude so far. The exchange recently suffered a major outage which causes a lot of bad blood. It now appears they will finally come around and support Bitcoin Cash in the future. That is the only right decision to make at this point, that much is evident.
It has been a couple of interesting few days for Bitcoin Cash supporters. Some exchanges supported this altcoin from day one, whereas others held off as long as possible. Poloniex was one of those platforms officially not supporting BCH in any way. However, that situation is no longer valid, as they recently posted an update to clarify the situation. More specifically, they were hesitant to support BCH due to potential network inconsistencies and whatnot.
Poloniex Comes out in Support of Bitcoin Cash
However, now that things have calmed down somewhat, the time has come to revisit this topic. More specifically, Poloniex will officially support Bitcoin Cash over the next few weeks. All users who had a BTC balance at the hard fork time will be created with their BCH balance accordingly. This shows the company effectively has the BCH in question in custody for several days now. The funds are expected to be released by August 14th at the latest, which is still more than a week away. It is unclear what is causing this massive delay exactly.
Do keep in mind this decision does not guarantee Poloniex will open a trading market. It is certainly possible BCH will be supported by the company in the long run. For now, there will be no trading pairs enabled Then again, the company may revisit that decision before the coins are credited as well. There are still a lot of uncertainties as far as Poloniex is concerned, that much is evident.
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the announcement is the withdrawal issue. Anyone who receives Bitcoin Cash on Poloniex will not be able to take it out of their account immediately. No one should feel comfortable leaving money in an exchange wallet these days. Especially not if that company is Poloniex, notorious for withdrawal delay and other issues that will affect your experience. It will be interesting to see how this situation evolves in the coming weeks.
Header image courtesy of Shutterstock
