Recent events in the cryptocurrency industry have made possible the creation of two new and distinct BCH-based blockchains through a hard-fork that will occur on November 15th around 4:40 PM UTC. To ensure that we have the best quality data set available to traders, it is essential to establish standard guidelines to provide clarity during a chaotic split.
First, we will be introducing separate tickers for the two chains split from BCH in order to remove all doubt. The tickers will be named BAB for the chain running the Bitcoin-ABC software, and BSV for the chain running the Bitcoin-SV software. The BCH ticker will also remain, given that some exchanges are allowing trading to continue without specifying which implementation is supported yet.
We’ve identified three different approaches that cryptocurrency exchanges are taking with respect to the BCH hard fork. Given the discrepancies between how exchanges are addressing naming conventions, Blockstream is establishing the following guidelines:
One group of exchanges is supporting both ABC and SV implementations with new tickers. In this case, Blockstream will publish all ABC trades as BAB and all SV trades as BSV, regardless of the exchange’s designation.
A second group is supporting only ABC, but continuing to call the asset BCH. Blockstream will publish these trades as BAB.
A third group is taking a wait-and-see approach to determine which chain will accrue the most hashpower or popularity, and will then assume BCH represents the winner (if there is no replay protection built in). Blockstream will publish these trades as BCH until further clarity is established.
The BCH symbol may exist in perpetuity given the possibility that the current pre-forked BCH chain will continue to be mined due to the mining difficulty adjustment algorithm introduced in the Bitcoin-ABC version 0.16.0 release. Alternatively, if the result is that the majority of exchanges on our feed refer to a single implementation (ABC or SV) as the “official” BCH, Blockstream will consider renaming the BCH ticker.
We hope this provides some clarity to the community, and we look forward to watching the events unfold!