August 1, 2017, is rapidly approaching and looming as a day of monumental importance for the future of Bitcoin, which is expected to undergo a hard fork on that day at 12:20 p.m. UTC. The impending expected split of the Bitcoin ledger will result in two coins, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. The reasons and motivations for the fork are complicated, and both the immediate effects and the long-term implications of this titanic schism for Bitcoin, and almost certainly the entire cryptocurrency universe, will likely be dramatic and profound.
For holders of Bitcoin, the practical immediate result is that they will be assigned an amount of Bitcoin Cash exactly equal to the amount of Bitcoin held at the time of the forking block. However, if your Bitcoin is stored by a third party, such as an exchange or an online wallet provider, there is no guarantee that you will ever be able to claim your Bitcoin Cash, much less trade it, and at least one exchange even cryptically (no pun intended) acknowledges the possibility that it might not support the original Bitcoin! If an exchange or online wallet provider does not support the new coin, then it may be the case that you will not be able to receive your allotment of coins. As many have already noted, during this critical time, holders of Bitcoin should keep their Bitcoin on private keys that they control and avoid storing their holdings on exchanges or online wallets where holders do not control the private keys, and if keeping Bitcoin on an exchange is unavoidable, then it's essential to know how a particular exchange will handle your Bitcoin (and Bitcoin Cash).
In the last few days, various cryptocurrency exchanges and online wallet providers have announced their contingencies for the hard fork and their positions in regards to the support of the new coin.
This link provides a list of many popular exchanges and their plans for the post-fork Bitcoin world:
Additionally, several other exchanges and online wallet providers, along with their contingencies, that are not listed at the linked page are noted below:
Exchanges
Bitpanda
Credit new coins? NO
Support new coins? NO
Trading of new coins? Maybe
“Same as all industry leaders, we do not support the contentious hard fork attempts and hence won’t credit you with BCC coins according to your Bitcoin balance. In the future, it may be possible, that we add BCC as a trading pair, although this is yet to be decided.”
Cryptopia
Credit new coins? Unknown
Support new coins? Unknown
Trading of new coins? Unknown
As of this writing (July 28, 4:30 a.m. UTC), Cryptopia has not issued any statement.
Livecoin
Credit new coins? YES
Support new coin? YES
Trading new coin?YES
“If a split of the chain will take place we will do all the possible to credit our clients with new Bitcoin forks as well as to save an original BTC balance. We will allow trading of new forks if they come to live.”
Novaexchange
Credit new coins? YES
Support new coin? YES
Trading new coin? YES. Ticker symbol: BCH
“As you might already know a hardfork of bitcoin will soon be released under the name Bitcoin cash (BCC). We will provide more information as we get closer to the fork. At this time we only want to inform you that any holder of Bitcoin stored with us at Novaexchange will get their BCC also. We will support both versions of Bitcoin, the original BTC and the hardfork BCC. We will give more information on how we will solve the duplicate ticker/symbol BCC situation.”
POSWallet
Credit new coins? Unknown
Support new coins? Unknown
Trading of new coins? Unknown
“Due to all of the uncertainty with the BTC and the introduction of SegWit, we will be putting the BTC wallet in maintenance on July 28th. We suggest that you withdraw your BTC to a personal wallet during this transition.”
Yobit
Credit new coins? Unknown
Support new coins? Unknown
Trading of new coins? Unknown
Deposits and withdrawals disabled on July 31 through August 1. Yobit recently issued a very brief tweet, but no information is available on the site itself.
“YoBit is ready for Bitcoin wallet update (1 or 2 forks). Btc deps/wds will be disabled on 31 jul - 1 aug.”
Online Wallet Providers
Xapo
Credit new coins? YES
Support new coins? Unknown at this time
Support Bitcoin? Probably, but not certain
“In the event of two surviving blockchains, we will support one blockchain, the one with the most accumulated difficulty. Xapo will give you the choice to withdraw the coins in the secondary blockchain or to let Xapo sell the coins in that secondary blockchain and automatically add that value to your account in the supported blockchain.”
By the way, the Xapo statement makes very clear the extreme uncertainty surrounding the implications of the upcoming fork and should make crystal clear how fluid this Bitcoin drama is. I think it is reasonable to assume that the markets for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and the rest of the cryptocurrencies will be extremely volatile. As dramatic as the price movements for cryptocurrencies have been, especially of late, I think it's very possible that we ain't seen nothing yet. Since July 24, futures (yes, cryptocurrency futures!) for Bitcoin Cash have been trading on a couple of exchanges in a range of $217 to $578, and it doesn't even exist yet! As soon as the fork occurs, the market could very well explode into a violently apoplectic seizure of attempting price discovery as it tries to assign a value to the new coin and reassesses the value of the original Bitcoin, and since altcoins on most exchanges are traded in terms of Bitcoin, their prices will also fluctuate wildly.
Do what you can to protect yourselves. Do everything you can to protect the Bitcoin you already have, and do everything you can to ensure that you are able to claim your Bitcoin Cash. Then get your popcorn ready and enjoy the fireworks show. We live in fascinating times.