Whenever a major crypto-currency exchange announces new coin listings it causes a predictable jump in prices. Which is exactly what happened when Coinbase, the biggest exchange in the US, last week announced it was considering listing five additional digital tokens.
According to a company blog post dated July 13, the exchange is mulling the addition of the Cardano (ADA), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Zcash (ZEC), Ox and Basic Attention Token (BAT) “altcoins”.
The major difference between Coinbase and other big exchanges such as Binance is that with Coinbase you can buy cryptos directly with fiat currency, which allows for large sums of money to enter the market via the coins it has listed.
Currently only four crypto-currencies are available on Coinbase: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC); it is said to be adding a fifth in Ethereum Classic (ETC) soon. The Ethereum announcement from Coinbase last month caused a jump in its price, as did news of the five new potential listings, which posted gains within a couple of hours, some rising over 20%.
Chasing the bears away
The announcement went on to say that “we are making this announcement internally at Coinbase and to the public at the same time to remain transparent with our customers about support for future assets.” However, the likelihood is that employees with insider knowledge would have bought into these coins at a low price before their predicted jump.
Crypto markets have been bearish for the past six months, with many currencies languishing at their lowest levels since November last year. A long-awaited boost to a few has been welcomed by industry players, none more so than those with access to this news before its release.
A number of crypto news websites have already begun to speculate over the likelihood of insider trading at major exchanges, which do have the power to move markets with a single blog post.
There is no guarantee that these five coins will be listed, but the premise of such was enough to send them up in an otherwise down-trending overall market. Coinbase said that “unlike the ongoing process of adding Ethereum Classic, which is technically very similar to Ethereum, these assets will require additional exploratory work and we cannot guarantee [yet that] they will be listed for trading.”
All five tokens are currently trading higher than their levels this time last week, while the crypto market as a whole is down by 6.5% on the same period.
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