- Important updates rolled out during early November
- Bicoin, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic and others affected
- All updates impact the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange
During early November 2019, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced a number of announcements that would go on to impact a range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin and Zcash. As a clued up and wise investor, it’s important that you are able to keep on top of these changes to ensure that you don’t miss any updates that could potentially impact the value of your portfolio in the long run.
So, what happened?
“Bitcoin, Litecoin, Zcash and Ethereum Classic will see a change in the requirements to confirm transactions within the Coinbase ecosystem. The change was made in order to improve customer experience, and security posture, added the exchange.”
Furthermore:
“Previously Bitcoin required 6 network confirmations for a transaction to be verified, the new change brings down the count to 3. Ethereum Classic saw its confirmation count drop from 5,676 to 3,527 as did ZEC, from 18 to 12. Litecoin was the only currency that had an increase in its network confirmations from 6 to 12.”
Due to the nature of these updates, no major changes in the market value actually occurred, so in this instance there’s not a huge amount of detail for investors to worry about, they should just simply be aware of the changes to ensure they know what’s going on. So, why did Coinbase run these updates? Well, it’s essentially just to do with prehistoric requirements that the team at Coinbase have decided are no longer required:
“The earlier confirmation requirements for most of the aforementioned cryptocurrencies were decided in 2018, when Coinbase failed to have a consistent approach that informed each currency’s requirement. This resulted in a situation where some assets may have had an overly conservative confirmation requirement, and some assets where the confirmation requirement may have been too low.”
And so you might ask now, what does this mean for you? As an investor in Litecoin, or Ethereum Classic or any of the other impacted cryptocurrencies, there is nothing more you need to do and nothing to worry about. However, you should always remember to try and keep up to date with any information or any changes about your cryptocurrency investments, even if they are only technically to do with the exchanges themselves. Sometimes updates can lead to panic sales or even panic buying that can lead to major market changes, therefore it’s important you stay informed in order to trade safely.
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