Where do the BCC go if an exchange doesn’t “support” it?

So, it’s my understanding that any and all bitcoins will be duplicated on the BCC chain. So for all the exchanges that don’t support BCC, will they just pocket the coins? Especially since many of them have the user’s private keys?

Sorry if this shows a lack of understanding of the fork and blockchain, please enlighten me if I am confused.

Enrico Borba

Posted 2017-08-01T15:30:20.867

Reputation: 103

Answers

As one popular Bitcoin advocate puts it, "your keys -- your bitcoin, not your keys -- not your bitcoin". Yes, the exchange can pocket your BCC, as well as it technically can pocket your BTC.

Even if an exchange declares BCC support, beware of accounting issues.

Sergei Tikhomirov

Posted 2017-08-01T15:30:20.867

Reputation: 1 189

An exchange or other site holding coins on your behalf can do several things after a chain fork leading up to a new coin token;

Add support for the new coin (Bitcoin Cash, in this case) and add it to your portfolio. This is the most "right" thing to do, but it may require quite some development resources. It's particularly understandable that sites that have always been bitcoin-only-sites can't turn around easily and add support for more token types. Development costs not only in development time, but also the added risk of bugs and security glitches.
Credit you with the "free money" in some other way, i.e. sell all the accrued Bitcoin Cash and credit the customers with Bitcoins. This may also be non-trivial if the site has a highly secure cold-storage vault.
Simply ignore the problem. This seems to be the approach i.e. of Localbitcoins.
Procrastinate the problem, telling their customers that they will "eventually" get their Bitcoin Cash.
Sell all the Bitcoin Cash and keep the money.

I'd say, only the last one would be equivalent with theft - but there is no reason to assume the last option as default. It should also be possible to figure out by studying the deposit addresses; if any deposit address had Bitcoin at the 1st of August and still has Bitcoin Cash but not Bitcoin, then it hasn't been pocketed (yet). If both the Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin is gone, and the site hasn't made any public statement on Bitcoin Cash, then the Bitcoin Cash has most likely been stolen.

tobixen

Posted 2017-08-01T15:30:20.867

Reputation: 756