By Guest Author
There is confusion in the crypto market as cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase put out a series of Tweets that GDAX will disable the purchase and acquisition of bitcoin cash for a few hours.
This announcement came shortly after the exchange platform announced full support for Bitcoin Cash. For over an hour, Coinbase and GDAX were both showing Coinbase Cash prices at around $8,500, a price that is almost three times the actual price of Bitcoin Cash, which is trading at $3,500 on other platforms.
At the time when the price of Bitcoin Cash skyrocketed on their platform, trading for the cryptocurrency was disabled. This makes it unclear if any trades were conducted during that period. At the moment though, there seems to be confusion amongst investors and traders regarding the $8,500 that was seen on Coinbase platform.
Analysts are of the view that the $8,500 price was some pricing glitch and shouldn’t be regarded as the actual price of the digital currency.
The company earlier this morning tweeted that they are cancelling the entire Bitcoin Cash order book on GDAX. They added that an update would be provided soon. The glitch in Coinbase pricing of Bitcoin Cash might not affect the price action of the digital currency since it is an isolated incidence.
After the announcement by the company, Bitcoin Cash was added on Coinbase and GDAX simultaneously. This is relevant because the liquidity to purchase and sell digital currencies on Coinbase stems from GDAX, its sister exchange. This implies that a stable order book is required on GDAX before Coinbase’s buy and sell features becomes functional. It is for this reason that Coinbase has included cryptocurrencies like Litecoin to GDAX months before being added on Coinbase, this ensured that sufficient liquidity was available during the launch.
While addressing the issue on Twitter, Coinbase’s Ex-Director of Engineering Charlie Lee tweeted that it is very hard operationally to add an asset to both platforms simultaneously, thus the reason for the glitch.
At the time of this report, the price of Bitcoin Cash stood at $9,500 on GDAX, while it is trading around $3,000 on other platforms like Bittrex.
