Coinfloor is not exactly one of the main exchange on the market, it trades just half a million dollars in bitcoins a day, but it is the oldest exchange platform in the UK, having been founded in 2013; consequently, even though nothing is epochal, the decision to proceed with the delisting of ethereum starting next January 3 is not irrelevant. In particular, the move communicated by coinfloor is noteworthy because the exchange justifies the decision to proceed with the delisting of ethereum, stating that the transition from the POW protocol to the new POS protocol wanted by Vitalik Buterin would require the exchange to dedicate a team of people only to perform the required updates, which cannot be avoided if you do not want to jeopardize the security of the platform. According to Coinfloor, in other words, hiring new staff with the specific skills to perform various technical updates would be so burdensome not to justify, given the fact that exchanges in ethereum represent only a small share of the total volumes exchanged by the platform, a similar effort; it is therefore better to completely abandon the support for money than to insist on supporting it without this producing an actual benefit.

Obi Nwosu, founder and CEO of Coinfloor, then wanted to further clarify how things are, pointing out that the transition from a POW protocol to a POS is such a complex operation that it may inevitably take years before this step is completed and, meanwhile, two versions of the same chain would survive, something that the exchange obviously is not willing to handle. In light of these reasons, therefore, it is not possible to exclude that, in the near future, other minor exchange platforms may also make the same decision, which would inevitably have a negative impact on the price; on the other hand the abandonment of the POW protocol is an almost obligatory choice for ethereum that must be measured against other platforms that, instead, have already solved the scalability problem precisely by adopting consensus protocols different from the POW. In short, either ethereum succeeds in completing the transition from POW to POS or it will inevitably end up being beaten technologically by projects like TRON, EOS, WAVES and ARDR, all platforms that, at this moment, appear clearly superior to that created by Vitalik Buterin; therefore, difficult months for ethereum appear, squeezed in the midst of the need for radical change and the taking away of small exchanges like Coinfloor that may not be available to support the developers' efforts.