Bitfinex Enables Bitcoin Cash Margin Trading

Bitfinex has enabled margin trading of Bitcoin Cash on its platform.

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Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex tweeted on Thursday that it has enabled margin trading for Bitcoin Cash (BCH). BCH is the new cryptocurrency resulting from the August 1 hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. The exchange explained that it is using BCH as the ticker symbol and “Bcash” as the descriptive name “to avoid confusion with bitcoin.” However, “BCH will not be eligible as collateral for margin positions,” it previously announced.

Thursday’s announcement came after Bitfinex started trading BCH/USD, BCH/BTC and BCH/ETH the previous day.

On August 1, the exchange began crediting customers with the new cryptocurrency, after the first BCH block was mined. However, while their customers were expecting to be credited 1 BCH per 1 bitcoin held at the time of the fork, they complained about receiving 15% less BCH.

In calculating BCH distribution, Bitfinex explained that it took into account margin positions which could lead to a surplus or a deficit of BCH at the exchange. For example, margin longs in BTC/USD will not receive BCH while margin shorts in BTC/USD will not pay BCH. Consequently, the exchange said, “we will be resolving this discrepancy in the form of a socialized distribution coefficient.” On August 2, it revealed that the final coefficient used for distributing BCH was 0.8539.

However, Bitcoin Cash deposits and withdrawals are still unavailable, according to some users who tweeted the screenshot shown below.

What do you think of Bitfinex enabling margin trading for BCH? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Twitter

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