I certainly wouldn't say we are treating it as a "shitcoin". I tweeted out a few thoughts here to share how I think about it:
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/89248668753155686...
Hope it helps. Thx!
http://blog.kraken.com/post/1150/bitcoin-cash-and-a-critical...
http://blog.kraken.com/post/1183/bitcoin-cash-and-a-critical...
Here's Coinbase's original statement, which seems to be exactly what the grandparent comment was saying: https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/890986442674941953
"Coinbase does not intend to interact with the Bitcoin Cash blockchain."
It's just strange that Coinbase either wasn't prepared or sees BCH as a threat. Balkanization of bitcoin is unnecessary. Why refuse to support what everyone else supports? https://twitter.com/Yelka_Pineda/status/891020902066003968
There are political elements, for sure, but the overall reason for it is there are a genuine segment of people who believe segwit is kludge, and on chain scaling is the way forward.
Whether or not those people are correct, this chain represents their version of the bitcoin vision, dismissing it as a political move is a tad arrogant.
It perhaps makes sense from a business standpoint: why support a new coin from day 1 instead of waiting for the ecosystem to mature? Coinbase already doesn't support other coins like XRP or Monero or whatnot.
I agree with this point, and I see Coinbase's comm as trust-building with their (perhaps nonvocal majority?) customers.
The future of this technology cannot work if you must understand the jargon and consequences of a fork (and whatever else can happen), and then form an opinion of your exchanges as a mainstream adopter based upon how they deal with these intricacies. Most people just want something easy to use. Coinbase has allowed that happy path to continue, and I trust them as a result of the manner in which they handled this event.
(Now, for people in-the-know, things are different. But I'd bet that Coinbase's target audience is not blockchain hackers.)
Helping the split in any way (e.g. by making the split easier to use or by acknowledging it as a reasonable alternative) means facilitating future splits and future balkanization, driving down long term value of BTC.
It simply says, not supporting BCC now, but might in the future -- we will not acquire the BCCs for Coinbase.
"Wait and see" is usually a reasonable stance for companies to take, but in the case of securities splitting in two, withholding the new securities until their value changes - potentially even keeping them yourself - really shows your hand.
Among other things, this split has thrown into relief the stances various exchanges take with regard to their clients, and anyone researching which exchange to use should take a good hard look at moves like this when considering who to invest with.
Will Coinbase keep BCC coins for itself?
No. Coinbase does not intend to support or interact with the new blockchain in any way. If this were to change, Coinbase would make those coins available for customers to withdraw, not keep them.
Ironically, not "interacting" with that chain only serves to create more dead coins and thus push up value. Imagine if the value grows considerably... customers might be changing their tune if they feel that they lost out and feel they were misinformed.
The email laid out the process if you want access to the fork.
Downtime should be unacceptable and exceptional for a financial marketplace.
On Coinbase however, downtimes and unexpected behavior are common place, and happen multiple times a week.
It's outright fraudulent when you allow your employees to trade during those downtimes.
What the hell.
Many that left their BTC assets on CB in interest of your core benefits - simplicity, security - will watch with interest for further communication in the coming weeks as price of bt cash stabilizes.
I imagine most of the exchanges that didn't support BCH are going to lose a lot of customers over it.
I didn't know much about the fork up until a few days ago, but I did know to make sure I unloaded everything off of Coinbase if I wanted to benefit and double my tiny little bit of BTC since there had been a notice for weeks now about how they won't support it and a cursory Google search showed what you needed to benefit.