We’d like to remind our customers that the value of bitcoin is subject to volatility, and that any fork in Bitcoin is likely to have an immediate effect on market price. The only way to fully avoid such volatility is to not hold any bitcoin. Upon any fork, Coins.ph may temporarily suspend transactions on the system while we make the necessary updates to our system. Notably, during that time, you may not be able to buy, sell, or transfer bitcoin out of the system. While we would aim to complete such an update in the shortest time possible, we will only resume transactions once we are confident that such an update has been adequately reviewed and tested. Announcements and updates will be made on the Coins.ph website and/or official social media channels.

Over the past few days, we have received questions from customers regarding our plans in the case of a fork of the Bitcoin network. Following recent news and community discussion, we see a hard fork as a distinct possibility, and wanted to share some of our plans and views on this matter. First, while we can’t always predict how the future will unfold, we would like to assure our customers that we, and that we will act as fast as possible to develop solutions that serve our customers’ needs and protect their interests. At present,, which isHowever, similar to others in the industry, we consider any hard fork which is rolled out without industry-wide consensus, and therefore splits the network, to be an, not Bitcoin itself. This is irrespective of how much hash power the forked coin may have. Ours is only one voice of many, but this is entirely consistent with the view currently taken by the economic majority of Bitcoin exchanges. If such fork was executed in a supportable way, and there was sufficient customer and market demand for the new coin, we may elect to add support for such altcoin as soon as technically possible.

Finally, we encourage customers to refer to the Coins.ph User Agreement, which outlines our obligations in the event of a fork of Bitcoin.

Several of our views above have also been expressed by other Bitcoin providers, like Bitgo in a recent blog post.

Disclaimer: Trading bitcoin and other virtual currencies carries a high level of risk, and may not be suitable for everyone. Read the full BSP advisory to understand the risks of buying, holding, or trading cryptocurrencies.