The recent downfall of Bitcoin price was attributed to the potential split or hardfork of Bitcoin, as reported by some mainstream financial media like 36kr and Sina in China. Aside from the lobbying of mining pools, support of exchanges is of critical importance. Although ETC was first traded on Bitsquare, Poloniex was actually the one that resurrects Ethereum Classic with abundant liquidity in the Ethereum hardfork 2016.

So far BTCC and Yunbi have released formal statement regarding the potential fork of Bitcoin network. OKCoin will support both coins if there is a split. Huobi is still studying the situation.

Bixin, aka haobtc, will stick to the “one bitcoin only” policy and always follow the longest blockchain with 90% hashrate.

As Jerry Chan puts in his open document for: Mitigating Bitcoin Forking Risk during Network Upgrade

The main impetus for this document is the recent suggestions emanating from the Core development community about an implementation of a User Activated Soft Fork or UASF, (one that can be executed with a minority of hashpower supporting it, but with the support of a sufficient number economic nodes) which presents a clear and imminent danger to the stability of the network, especially for the exchanges and businesses that run on Bitcoin.

BTCC, a firm supporter of Bitcoin Core, released a Chinese and an English version of statement regarding the , which is signed by a total of 17 exchanges. BTCChina also reiterate its position through Chinese weibo :

1. BTCChina and BTCC support onchain scaling.

2. BTCChina and BTCC doesn’t support two kinds of Bitcoin resulted from consensus-breaking implementation. “However, none of the undersigned can list BTU unless we can run both chains independently without incident. Consequently, we insist that the Bitcoin Unlimited community (or any other consensus breaking implementation) build in strong two-way replay protection. Failure to do so will impede our ability to preserve BTU for customers and will either delay or outright preclude the listing of BTU.”

Yunbi released a formal statement on the exchange’s position on possible hard fork

“We think the future of bitcoin will determined by the market and hash power. YUNBI does not have a subjective view on which upgrading method should BTC follow. YUNBI respect the selection of the market and hash power, and will follow the longest BTC blockchain if hard fork happened.”

Yunbi details the likelihood of hardfork and corresponding measures.

“If one of the forked chain quickly failed, then YUNBI will follow the other chain, and there would be only one Bitcoin on the users account. If both of the forked chains survived, and both the the forked coins have been listed on the exchanges, YUNBI will also distribute the forked coins to the users account. YUNBI will only list the forked coin trading after at least 3 famous exchanges listed it in advance.”

The Yunbi statement was interpreted as a “neutral standing” and therefore assured by some commentators on weibo.

Two of the “Big Three” exchanges, OKCoin, Huobi are not among the 17 exchanges that signed the statement released by BTCC.

Star Xu, founder of OKCoin, told 8btc:

“If there is a fork, we will support both coins. We don’t have preference.”

When asked the same question, Huobi told 8btc that

“We are still assessing the situation and no formal statement yet.”

Obviously exchanges prioritize tasks differently. To comply with regulatory requirement is more imminent than dealing with the potential split or fork for the big exchanges.

Haobtc, recently rebranded as Bixin, will stick to the “one bitcoin only” policy and always follow the longest blockchain with 90% hashrate. The statement https://bixin.com/post/bixin321/ was released later today, in which three arguments were given to explain that the situation happens to Ethereum might not be applicable to Bitcoin after hard fork.