As the major changes behind the scenes of Bitcoin.com begin to filter through to its users, the Bitcoin Cash-backing site has announced that its own crypto exchange is now live for traders. Following the sideways move of erstwhile CEO-cum-‘Bitcoin Jesus’, Roger Ver, to Executive Chairman of the company behind the site, and the appointment of Stefan Rust to fill his former role, today saw the formal launch of Exchange.Bitcoin.com, following a month-long sign up period that it is claimed attracted 10,000 potential traders. 

Trading Pairs

The new exchange will host trading pairs including Bitcoin (BTC – which it insists on labelling Bitcoin Core) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the currency Ver spearheaded in its fork away from BTC in 2017, and later defended assiduously in the wake of the highly acrimonious BCH/BSV split of last year. Also paired up will be Litecoin (LTC), XRP, Tron (TRX), ZCash (ZEC), Stellar (XLM), DASH, EOS and controversial market-leading stablecoin, Tether (USDT). 

For the first three months of trading, the new service will offer negative fees at 0.3%, with the ‘bonus’ paid as a reward at the end of that period. 

Sign-up comes at three levels, which require slightly different KYC and AML requirements: 

‘Individual requires’ verification of mobile number and email, with a daily withdrawal limit of up to 1 BTC (or equivalent) daily or 5 BTC monthly.

‘Individual Pro’ also demands ID and proof of address, but ups limits to 100 BTC daily, with no monthly ceiling.

Businesses will require full verification of Directors and UBOs and all corporate documents and forms. 

Bitcoin.com’s name

In a statement, Bitcoin.com’s new CEO touted the trustworthy nature of the Bitcoin.com name, which may have raised a few eyebrows among the Bitcoin maximalist crowd who have long snubbed its support for Bitcoin Cash and often accused it of potentially misleading crypto novices into investing in its preferred crypto rather than the market leader. 

This was a situation that again came into the spotlight following a tweet from Ver yesterday touting the existing local.bitcoin.com peer-to-peer marketplace the site also runs – with many responders accusing Ver – again – of trading on the Bitcoin brand and deceiving consumers by knowingly conflating the Bitcoin.com offering with the established LocalBitcoins.com BTC trading sites that came to prominence during turmoil in Venezuela last year. 

However, Rust believes the new exchange “will complement our existing trusted products in making money work for everyone.”

He also touted upcoming support on the exchange for Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) tokens, a Bitcoin Cash-based system for tokenising assets such as licenses; digital media rights; and securities.