CoinGeek Abandoned the BCH Name and Chose a Permanent Bitcoin SV Split

CoinGeek, a principal mining backer of Bitcoin SV, said on November 23, 2018 that it no longer wanted the Bitcoin Cash name or BCH ticker and had instructed its team to begin rolling out Bitcoin SV as a separate coin. The announcement marked a strategic retreat from the attempt to make one competing rule set the sole successor to Bitcoin Cash after the November 15 chain split.

The language was partisan, not a neutral protocol ruling. CoinGeek characterized Bitcoin SV as the original Bitcoin and criticized Bitcoin ABC. The verifiable development was narrower: CoinGeek accepted that the chains had diverged, said there was no path to reunification, and chose to build around a distinct Bitcoin SV identity. It also said nChain was prepared to leave the ABC chain alone if ABC added replay protection and accepted a permanent split.

A protocol dispute became two assets

Bitcoin ABC version 0.18.0 had implemented the November 15 Bitcoin Cash upgrade. Its published specification added OP_CHECKDATASIG, intended to validate external messages, and canonical transaction ordering, described by ABC as groundwork for scaling. The competing Bitcoin SV implementation rejected that roadmap and promoted a different scaling approach.

After incompatible software rules produced separate chains, proof-of-work alone did not settle every practical question. Wallets, exchanges and payment processors still had to decide which chain would inherit the BCH label, whether customers would receive assets on both chains, and when transfers were safe.

Coinbase had said on November 20 that it would keep the Bitcoin Cash and BCH designation for the ABC chain after observing that ABC had a higher hash rate and a longer proof-of-work chain. CoinGeek’s November 23 pivot therefore aligned its naming strategy with an institutional reality already forming across trading venues, even though its statement continued to dispute ABC’s technical and philosophical claims.

Exchanges treated the split as operationally unfinished

Independent Reserve’s November 23 update called the ABC chain Bitcoin Cash with the BCH ticker, but kept BCH deposits and withdrawals disabled. The exchange cited volatile hashing power and the risk that a blockchain reorganization could reverse transactions. It was only considering whether to credit customers with Bitcoin Cash SV balances and said stable infrastructure, including wallets and block explorers, still had to emerge.

CEX.IO also stated on November 23 that the BCH on its platform represented the ABC chain. It planned to credit eligible customers with BCHSV based on balances recorded immediately before the November 15 fork, but said it would not offer BCHSV trading pairs or deposits; only withdrawals were planned. Those controls show why the event mattered beyond branding. A chain can continue producing blocks while remaining constrained as a transferable, tradeable asset inside custodial systems.

The date also fell during severe market weakness. Kraken’s November 23 daily report listed bitcoin at $4,232, down 3.88%, on $90 million of BTC asset volume. It listed BCH at $199.10, down 7.18%, on $6.23 million of BCH asset volume, while total activity across Kraken markets was $174 million. These are Kraken-specific report values, not global closes, and the record does not isolate the chain split as the cause of either decline.

What November 23 established

CoinGeek’s decision did not by itself prove that replay risk had ended, that every exchange would use the same symbols, or that either network had achieved durable economic security. It did establish that a leading SV backer was moving from a winner-take-all contest over Bitcoin Cash toward a permanent, separately named chain.

That distinction is the institutional lesson of the episode. Protocol code determined that incompatible chains could persist; miners supplied security; but exchanges and service providers shaped the names, custody rules and market access through which users encountered the resulting assets.

Later context

On November 26, CoinGeek distributed a follow-up release saying it would support a permanent split, continue mining the BSV chain and treat the hash war as ended. That later confirmation clarifies the November 23 direction but was not available on the event date.