In a move which will be welcomed by investors across Europe, the Coinbase GDAX exchange has announced that from 24th January it will reopen access to the BCH/EUR order book. This move will allow users in Europeto directly access the bitcoin cash markets without first having to exchange euros into bitcoin, which resulted in commission on the transaction being charged twice.

Coinable halted the trading of bitcoin cash in December 2017 soon after the service was first launched. The closure was as a result of technical problems which meant that the exchange struggled to deal with the level of traffic it was receiving, and issues relating to the liquidity of bitcoin cash.

In the hope of a smoother launch, the roll-out of the BCH/EUR order book on the GDAX exchange will be carefully phased. Initially, the BCH/EUR market will be in ‘post-only’ mode for the opening minutes of trading. It will then enter ‘limit-only’ mode before finally allowing ‘full trading’. The decisions to step the market up from mode to mode has been made to account for factors such as increased price volatility and order book liquidity. It remains to be seen how successful the planned launch will be.