Binance has officially announced that as from next week, it will no longer offer withdrawals or trading options for Bitcoin SV (BSV), per a post on its official blog.
In the post, the exchange pointed out that it will delist and stop offering trading on all available trading pairs of BSV, a currency which was only created last year November, after Bitcoin Cash had forked.
Possible End for BSV?
In the announcement, Binance claims it routinely reviews tokens listed its platform to ensure that “every asset continues to meet the high level of standard that we expect.” The company asserts that a delisting action, such as this, will only be made necessary after an asset has gone through a thorough review, as they believe delisting is the only way to protect their users.
The exchange also pointed out that before it goes on a delisting action, it considers factors such as the quality and level of the asset’s development, responsiveness to its requests o due diligence, and “any evidence of fraudulent or unethical conduct.”
The exchange concluded by saying that it will continue to support withdrawals of BSV until 10:000 am UTC on July 22. From then on, the currency would no longer be available for any financial transaction on its platform.
The delisting action is coming just a few days after Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Chief Executive Officer of Binance, made a threat to carry out this exact action. In a tweet from his account, CZ had warned that Binance would delist BSV if Craig Wright, the developer of the currency, refused to desist from his aggressive behavior on Twitter.
Other Exchanges Followed
Shortly after the Binance delisting tweet, other exchanges started following suit. The first was Kraken which ran a poll asking their followers if they should also delist BSV, the result so far is a resounding 72% in favor.
Should Kraken delist Bitcoin SV (BSV)? #delistbsv
— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) April 15, 2019
Next up, was Erik Voorhees, founder of Shapeshift who also said they will delist within 48hours.
We stand with @binance and CZ's sentiments. We’ve decided to delist Bitcoin SV #BSV from @ShapeShift_io within 48 hrs.
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) April 15, 2019
At the time of writing, Bitcoin SV is down 21% in the last 24 hours, if more exchanges join in the delisting of the coin, it could spell trouble for BSV from which it will have a very hard time recovering.
Craig Wright: Controversial Figure
Craig Wright has- on multiple occasions- stated that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator, and founder of Bitcoin (BTC).
Wright has been in the news recently, as he offered a $5,000 reward in BSV to anyone who had information on the identity of Hodlnaut, a Twitter user who mainly gained popularity for starting the Lightning Torch Network, Lightning Network-based crypto humanitarian platform.
Hodlnaut, whose Twitter account has now been deleted, found himself (or herself, as the case may very well be) as the subject of the entrepreneur’s ire after directly accusing him of falsely claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto and calling him a fraud.
In addition to Hodlnaut, Wright also issued legal notices to a few of his detractors, including Peter McCormack, the host of popular podcast channel “What Bitcoin Did,” who has publicly claimed that Wright is not Nakamoto.
https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1116733748794540033
In response to Wright’s bounty, numerous members of the crypto community began a campaign to protect the entity of Hodlnaut, including changing their Twitter profile names and display pictures to that of the anonymous user. Since Hodlnaut’s account wasn’t verified, it would be impossible for anyone actually to find him (or her).
Still, the Twitter cryptoverse didn’t stop there. They began the #WeAreAllHodlnaut campaign in a bid to show solidarity with the embattled user. In addition to that, they showed extensive support to CZ and called on other popular crypto exchanges to delist BSV as well, with the #DelistBSV hashtag.
It would seem that the requests are beginning to gain traction. On its Twitter account, popular exchange Kraken conducted an online poll on whether or not it should delist BSV as well. As of this writing, the poll has gotten 5,264 votes, of which 77 percent voted in the positive.