Support for Bitcoin Unlimited’s future asset BCU is already waning - even before the asset itself comes into existence.
Futures trading on the two exchanges hosting BCU, Bitfinex and HitBTC, has seen the price of the asset drop around 30 percent in a week to hit new lows Sunday.
Having begun last week trading at around $260 on Bitfinex, one BCU now costs around $180, having increased 22 percent in 24 hours. In BTC terms, which both exchanges also offer as a pair, the drop went from around 0.237 to around 0.19 respectively.
On Reddit, commentators were quick to point out a lack of demand for the pairs. As HitBTC’s price index showed even sharper declines, Russian news resource Bitnovosti described it as “really embarrassing” for Bitcoin Unlimited supporters.
HitBTC meanwhile has begun duplicating customer balances in BTU in preparation for a possible hard fork March 31.
Withdrawals have also been halted, ostensibly to avoid so-called replay attacks compromising customer funds. Bitfinex is unaffected.
Roger Ver, Bitcoin Unlimited’s major proponent, continues his ardent advocacy for a hard fork, calling out a cryptocurrency journalist over accusations he lied about the project’s own developers finding a second bug which temporarily compromised node numbers last week.