Coinfloor, the oldest crypto exchange in UK is planning to delist Ethereum next month
Founded in 2013, the oldest crypto exchange in UK, Coinfloor is a small exchange, with a 24-hour volume of trading BTC/GBP at just $450,000, according to CoinMarketCap, compared to $1.5 million of BTC/GBP at Coinbase Pro. The company has become the U.K.’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange.
Coinfloor is planning to delist Ethereum next month, citing an unclear future of hard forks and the need for onerous technical support for the second biggest coin by market capitalization. The company will also delist bitcoin cash. Starting Jan. 3, Coinfloor will support only Bitcoin.
In advance of the 11th anniversary of #Bitcoin, we have some big news to announce today! ?
From 3rd January 2020, @Coinfloor will be focused on providing Bitcoin only services!
For more information, please check out our blog post: https://t.co/Myip75Zs74
— Coinfloor (@Coinfloor) December 17, 2019
Coinfloor’s opinion about why delisting Ethereum
The plan comes ahead of the launch of Ethereum 2.0, tentatively planned for early 2020, which will begin the process of shifting the network away from the energy-consuming proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS). According to some Ethereum developers, it’s likely to be years before the old Ethereum PoW chain is fully merged into the new PoS network, leading to current discussions around ways to create a secure bridge between the two chains.
Obi Nwosu, founder and CEO of Coinfloor said Ethereum’s platform upgrade could take years to complete. The complexity of the operation means for a period of time there could be two versions of Ethereum running.
In Nwosu’s opinion, the headache of accommodating Ethereum’s planned upgrades was not worth a diminutive increase in overall trading volumes. He said we have to maintain that currency whenever they make an update or a change, and Ethereum has got a long way to go with updates and changes to the platform.
About Bitcoin cash, Nwosu said compared to Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash’s traction had gone from a third of the market cap to one-tenth of market cap over last year. So it was under a certain level of support and interest for us to expend resources on listing it. As it doubles down on bitcoin, Coinfloor will also explore new avenues in areas such as lending in the coming year, Nwosu said.
Coinfloor’s decision suggests that nurturing a team with the specific expertise to follow the technical trials and tribulations of coins like Ethereum may be too expensive for smaller crypto players, particularly if this constitutes only a small part of their trading volume.
Licensed by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Coinfloor has access to the country’s Faster Payments Service for instant fiat deposits and withdrawals.
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