[koolba]

> That's awfully cynical.

If you knew me in person you'd know the cynicism was intentional. I've got quite a bit to start with and double so when it comes to anything involving digital currencies.

> They took a wait and see approach. Would you run your engineering team any differently?

On the contrary, I agreed with it. I said as much the day before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915884

> How do you tell a viable fork from the (many) others that have failed? If BCH falls to $10 in two weeks, would you still direct your engineers to support it?

I don't think it's possible to tell after less than a day if it's a viable fork. It's way too early. That's why I'm thinking this is driven more from the perceived cost of lawsuits vs. the development cost of supporting the feature.

[sowbug]

I see. I made this point somewhere else in this thread, but there's no lawsuit threat because of the terms of service (just arbitration), and if someone were a big fish but asleep at the wheel for the last few months, Coinbase could easily make them whole quickly by just manually sending them the BCH they wanted. Engineering full support as they're doing almost surely costs more than any conceivable loss customers could suffer in the interim (assuming anyone with a nontrivial balance takes responsibility for their actions or inaction).