[Digital Today reporter Yoonseo Lee] David Schwartz, a former chief technology officer at Ripple, cited security and potential design risks as reasons major cryptocurrency exchanges hesitate to list bitcoin-based assets.

On Sept. 18, blockchain outlet U.Today reported that Schwartz said major platforms such as Coinbase may first review safeguards such as replay protection when handling newly split bitcoin-based assets to prevent transactions from being duplicated across different chains.

The controversy began after an X user, formerly Twitter, questioned why Coinbase, Kraken and Trezor were ignoring Bitcoin BLAKE2b despite having supported several bitcoin fork assets in the past. In the past, they provided access to older bitcoin fork assets such as Bitcoin Cash, and users were able to continue trading them.

Bitcoin BLAKE2b is a separate chain that split from bitcoin. It uses the BLAKE2b mining algorithm rather than the SHA-256 used by bitcoin. Its structure, which can share transaction history with bitcoin from before the split, was also cited as part of the controversy.

Schwartz said this structure could lead to issues for exchanges in protecting funds. He mentioned that exchanges may adopt replay protection mechanisms to guard against potential vulnerabilities when dealing with newly split assets. He also pointed out that because bitcoin and the new fork network share pre-split transaction history, Bitcoin BLAKE2b could have engineering flaws that could lead to traders losing funds.

The key question is whether exchanges can prevent transactions made on one chain from being unintentionally processed on another. Schwartz explained that exchanges need sufficient safeguards such as replay protection to ensure security. That means preventing transactions conducted on one chain after a fork from being reprocessed on another chain.

The market response is that the discussion shows the issue is close to technical stability and operational burden for newly split chains. It also showed that a new chain is unlikely to be judged by the same standards simply because earlier bitcoin fork assets were already supported by exchanges.

Differences in how exchanges and wallet operators respond have also come back into focus. The Bitcoin BLAKE2b-based chain is seeing a different response from exchanges and wallet providers than existing fork assets. Users have complained about why those differences exist, but the debate has converged on the view that listing decisions are directly tied to managing technical risks.

A key point to watch is how clearly the Bitcoin BLAKE2b side can present the security measures that exchanges may require. Whether the new chain has core safeguards such as replay protection, and whether exchanges can verify them sufficiently, is likely to serve as a standard in listing discussions.

Robust replay protection is widely considered a technical prerequisite for listing a newly-split asset. These policies were generally adhered to in previous BTC forks. No exchange wants to deal with customers screwing up deposits due to poor engineering on a minor fork.