As Bitcoin Cash experiences a sudden price surge due to a series of good news, Bitcoin supporters accuse mainstream media and exchanges of colluding to pump the hard forked coin and tank Bitcoin.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash price has risen by an astonishing 42% in the last 24 hours, according to coinmarketcap. The price growth was evident from early hours of December 19, as the Bitcoin rival had a flow of positive news lately. For instance, BitPay announced it would accept payments in the hard forked coin for merchant accounts, and Thomson Reuters added BCH to its Eikon Platform. Also, Bitmain announced that it will only accept BCH for the latest batch of Antminer S9. All these news pushed the price to well above 2,000 dollars yesterday.
But BCH exploded during the last 12 hours, as Coinbase Inc announced BCH trading on its platforms (GDAX exchange and Coinbase wallet). After 01:00 UTC, BCH price skyrocketed $3,813 and it has stayed above 3,000 ever since although gradually declining from the ATH.
Meanwhile, GDAX was and is still facing problems. BCH trading has obviously halted and everyone sees a price of $9,500 per BCH as JustCryptoNews reported earlier. Charlie Lee said that he had warned Coinbase that it was technically difficult to launch the new coin on the two platforms at once.
In hindsight, Coinbase should have listened to me. It was operationally very hard to launch on Coinbase and GDAX at the same time. Now with GDAX halted and Coinbase never opened, everyone is seeing a ridiculous price of $9500. 🤦♂️ tons of support tickets and upset customers.
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ (@SatoshiLite) December 20, 2017
This development ignited fury on the Bitcoin camp. Prominent figureheads mocked Coinbase
"Surprise! We're launching a new market in 3...2...1..." pic.twitter.com/kDydHKQxDF
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 20, 2017
while others started talking about "price manipulation", "pure penny stock speculation" and "inside trading".
From a purely trading perspective, bcash is clearly in emotional and irrational pumping territory. https://t.co/PEQ4gbC1UM
— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) December 20, 2017
alrightyyyyyyy pic.twitter.com/tNxzuuQ2BJ
— CryptoProfits (@cryptoprofits) December 20, 2017
Some noted the Bitcoin Cash volume rising on other exchanges prior to the announcement (although that could easily be attributed to a flow of positive news for BCH in the last couple of days):
To make things more complicated, CNBC's Fast Money tweeted about Roger Ver appearing on the show today "to discuss the biggest change to the crypto world since time was invented", hinting that BCH is ready to be the new Bitcoin. The tweet was accompanied by a BCH price chart showing the price to be at $8,499 which obviously was drawn from the halted GDAX alone.
@rogerkver aka Bitcoin Jesus joins us tomorrow to discuss the biggest change to the crypto world since time was invented! Must see TV.. #BitcoinCash is here... deal with it!! pic.twitter.com/k9kO30nwKF
— CNBC's Fast Money (@CNBCFastMoney) December 20, 2017
That ignited further uproar as Alex Morcos and others accused the show (and mainstream media in general) of misleading propaganda:
This kind of misleading propaganda is unfortunate. Smart money isn't going to fall for BitcoinCash or AltCoin #1931, but if main stream media is helping pump those things, the individual investor at home is going to be the one losing out. https://t.co/6A3K2rLtkO
— Alex Morcos (@morcosa) December 20, 2017
Blockstream's Adam Back called the network to correct the information
.@CNBC please correct that misleading information. https://t.co/y3SxKJir2s
— Adam Back (@adam3us) December 20, 2017
Others noted that Coinbase's move to freeze BCH-USD trading at $9,500 might be not coincidental:
And I forgot to point out that @GDAX froze the market at $9000. So yeah sure if you still believe that this wasn't done on purpose... I've got some BCash to sell you at $9000. https://t.co/7wqqU1UNJM
— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) December 20, 2017
Read more: Coinbase Will Investigate Insider Trading Allegations Regarding Bitcoin Cash Launch
What do you think? Did Coinbase or some other party try to play the market and artificially increase Bitcoin Cash price? Or was it a coincidence? Was there any inside trading or not?