Another major crypto exchange is delisting SV (BSV) amid an ongoing feud between that ’s creator Craig Wright and outspoken members of the community.
San Francisco-based Kraken Tuesday that it will no longer support BSV, citing both community sentiment and ongoing litigation filed against the exchange by the coin’s advocates.
Kraken will disable BSV deposits on April 22, will cease on all pairs April 29 and, finally, withdrawals will stop May 31.
The move follows announcements Monday by two other prominent exchanges, and ShapeShift, that they were delisting BSV in response to Wright’s behavior. ’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), that Wright is “poisoning” the community with his threats to sue people who called him a fraud because he has claimed to be ’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
But Kraken was already negatively disposed toward BSV long before the started.
In December, during the hard fork of cash when it got split into cash ABC and cash “Satoshi Vision,” Florida-based firm United Investment Corp. filed a federal against a group of defendants for supporting the ABC version, including Kraken and its CEO Jesse Powell. Kraken BSV in November.
“They are suing us, our investors, well-respected and prominent figures in the community, and the community got to the point it’s fed up with it,” Powell told CoinDesk. “It’s completely antithetical to what this community is about.”
Community sentiment
On Monday, Kraken launched a on its Twitter account, asking people to vote for or against delisting BSV. At the moment of writing, the poll shows that around 70,545 users voted, 71 percent supporting delisting, seven percent opposing and 21 percent not caring.
“We at Kraken have our own strong opinions, and it’s like a bubble, so putting out a poll was the opportunity to get other people’s opinions,” Powell explained.
If the vast majority of the votes had been in favor of keeping BSV at Kraken, it wouldn’t have been delisted, but if the results were indecisive, say 50/50, the coin would still have been delisted, Powell said.
In the past Kraken has delisted other , including Namecoin and Iconomi — the former because of its low volume and the need to support a technically onerous upgrade at some point, the latter because the protocol was by its creators.
The feud
The delisting wave started after Wright threatened to sue a pseudonymous Twitter user nicknamed Hodlonaut, known for starting the , and crypto investor and podcaster Peter McCormack, unless they .
“It looks they keep to use the law system to abuse it, suing anyone who says anything against them,” Powell said about BSV advocates.
Aside from ShapeShift and , the crypto apps , , and announced Monday they, too, would stop supporting BSV.
Powell said more exchanges may follow suit. “The more players delist them, the easier it becomes to do it,” he said.
Image of Jesse Powell via CoinDesk archives
Published at Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:12:00 +0000
