Kraken joined others in delisting the BSV asset from their trading platforms in 2019, while Coinbase decided to stop listing Bitcoin and gave its BTC ticker symbol to the new system that was created by BTC protocol engineers in 2017.
Although the BSV blockchain is the only network still running on Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin protocol, “Bitcoin” in the eyes of the confused public and mainstream media usually refers to the BTC network.
If successful, the suits could change the nature of the Bitcoin industry in radical ways, and formally recognize BSV as “Bitcoin”—including use of Bitcoin-related signs and wording.
At the time, Gox was the only Bitcoin/fiat exchange platform with enough liquidity to be useful although it wasn’t the only platform or even the first exchange to trade Bitcoin, and Powell realized there needed to be an alternative if Mt.
Ver was an early investor in Kraken, participating in parent company Payward, Inc’s seed funding raise of $1.5 million.
It eventually set up shop in California, and is these days one of the most popular and best-known USD trading platforms. In 2020 it received a banking charter in Wyoming under that state’s special purpose depository institution rules, and is reportedly looking to go public with a valuation of US$20 billion.
There have been a few hiccups along the way, due in part to Powell’s public opposition to restrictive regulation.
Kraken, along with two other Roger Ver backed digital currency exchanges and Bittylicious, announced they would delist BSV from their trading platforms in April 2019.
“Over the last few months, the team behind Bitcoin SV have engaged in behaviour completely antithetical to everything we at Kraken and the wider crypto community stands for.
Delisting a digital asset due to moral objections over one person’s actions is unprecedented in the history of Bitcoin and blockchain.
Wright to defend his professional reputation that drew the exchange group’s ire, not anything involving the BSV development team.
If the BSV team has made any “fraudulent claims,” as Kraken also referenced, then no one has been able to prove this either in or out of a court.
After years of fairly regular backroom dealings, nepotism, payola, hacks, and other ethically questionable behavior in the wider blockchain industry, only BSV was targeted for delisting.
Social networks and app stores have shown similar behavior when joining together to “cancel” specific people from the internet at the same time—moves that have also proven controversial and drawn criticism.
However, it’s important to note that Kraken and Binance still list BCH—which remains in the “top 10” digital assets by market cap, and presents the most publicly-visible threat to BTC, since it’s BSV that runs on Bitcoin’s original protocol and rightfully claims the name.
Roger Ver has been open about his 2002 felony conviction and prison time for dealing in, and storing, agricultural explosives without a license yet his BCH token is still listed on Kraken.
BSV may not be a household name yet, but it represents the greatest legal threat to BTC and BCH, their use of the name “Bitcoin,” and their investors’ net worth.
Wright and his work, building up a public record of media material his opponents can reference before a judge in the future.
Instead the biggest names in Silicon Valley are aligned with the biggest names in cryptocurrency to execute a commercial attack against Bitcoin and its creator Dr.
Though headquartered for years in San Francisco , Kraken last month reportedly shut down its Market Street office, claiming the area was too dangerous for employees.
That deal eventually ended, with Powell showing frustration at delays in the process and ever-more-restrictive consumer protection focused and sensible regulation in Japan, and Kraken left the Japanese market all together.
These criticisms do have some legitimacy, given governments’ tendency to overreach once basic regulations are in place.
And how did opposition to government overreach morph into fierce opposition to BSV? BSV encourages compliance with existing laws and actions to rein in some of “crypto’s” worst excesses, such as thefts, the unilateral power of centralized protocol engineers and developers as well as the general association with criminal/unethical activity.
But rather than seeking out new ways to use these assets in a real economy of real goods and services, their use case is rather limited: promote them to “investors” as buy-low, sell-high instruments that somehow always rise in price over time.
On the other hand, it was like the cliche of the working-class family that wins the lottery—greed, jealousy, allegiances, trust and friendships became important.
Making it all worse was the fact that millions of dollars in value could now be sent to anyone, anywhere in the world, without the legal financial system or law enforcement knowing anything about it.
To stick with the initial anarchist principles of “free the market, free the world,” rather than grabbing as many dollars as possible, was equal to “leaving money on the table” that would be scooped up by someone else anyway.
But when they use their positions to launch coordinated commercial attacks and “cancel” other, perfectly legitimate blockchain networks, while ducking behind the “free market/censorship resistant” umbrella when it comes to actual law, it raises eyebrows.