8 ms·

Coinbase Is Exploring Cardano, BAT, Stellar Lumens, Zcash, and 0x

131 points by andreygrehov 8y ago

tlrobinson 8y ago
In case you were wondering how this news affected the price of these assets (as of this posting): ADA +10.59% BAT +20.82% XLM +9.42% ZEC +15.18% 0x +23.40%
- Klathmon 8y ago
  And just for comparison (i'm using the last 24-hr numbers here): BTC +0.47% ETH +1.14% LTC +0.56%
- yumraj 8y ago
  Wonder if folks at Coinbase did or could have engaged in insider trading? And if they did, does it even fall under SEC jurisdiction or crypto currencies are in the wild West of insider trading?
  - gangster_dave 8y ago
    This was probably the right thing to prevent insider trading. There was evidence of insider trading when Coinbase added BCH, so they might be just completely avoiding the risk of information leaks.
  - justboxing 8y ago
    > Wonder if folks at Coinbase did or could have engaged in insider trading They'd be fools not to. Cryptocurrency trading is not regulated by SEC type entities (yet). Until it is regulated, you can get away with insider trading and even other activities like wash trading, painting the tape, pump and dump etc.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Until it is regulated, you can get away with insider trading You would have criminally mis-used Coinbase’s information which properly belongs to its shareholders. There is no statute against insider trading. It’s all a breach of fiduciary duties.
    - prantomone 8y ago
      Not true, you can go to jail for that stuff today. The moment there is a derivative (like a futures contract),the CFTC has jurisdiction (and has already sent subpoenas).
      - justboxing 8y ago
        > Not true, you can go to jail for that stuff today Source? Can you point to a single person prosecuted and sent to Jail for Cryptocurrency insider trading?
        aik 8y ago
        I don't believe anyone has been caught yet. Coinbase was in trouble after the BCH situation though, both risking an investigation as well as hurting user and investor confidence.
  - alttab 8y ago
    There was plenty of this and speculation thereof when it comes to the BCH launch in December[1]. [1] https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-insider-trading/ https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-inside...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dantiberian 8y ago
    This is why they are making the announcement now. I would suspect that only a few trusted people would have been involved in making the decision on which tokens to explore. They then made this announcement that they are exploring it at the same time as it was announced internally. > 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. This would hopefully avoid another class action lawsuit like they did with Bitcoin Cash: https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-insider-trading/ https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-inside....
- granaldo 8y ago
  Thing about announcement like this one is that the correction normally kick in immediately after the surge See chart https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zcash https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zcash https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/0x https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/0x https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token When prominent exchange like binance list coin it follows a complete dump.
  - brendyn 8y ago
    I did a little bit of research on what happens to coins when they are listed on Binance, which you can see here: https://paste.debian.net/?show=1033668;lines=0 https://paste.debian.net/?show=1033668;lines=0 Roughly, coins would spike hard, then correct somewhat, but still generally be up heaps. I was shocked at how consistently coins would spike upon or days/weeks before being listed on Binance, so when NANO (then Raiblocks) was known to be soon listed, I traded some BTC for it and sure enough it spiked some 30% or so and I made a little bit off it. It was the only time I made money off crypto from an actual legitimate prediction based on evidence. The market seemed to just be scoffing at the idea of caring to be efficient (Weird-sounding finance vocabulary that basically means the price is already in equilibrium due to investors "already knowing" such obvious information, and traded with respect to it such that you still can't tell if the price is going to go up or down)
chrisco255 8y ago
BAT is an interesting choice. I'm a fan of Brave browser and it will be intriguing if BAT is able to pull off its mission of monetizing the internet while protecting privacy. I really hope they succeed.
gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
BAT is cool and the ad blocker in the Brave browser works really well. I use it on ad-heavy websites which burn up my computer on other browsers (which is any news site nowadays...). I still use Chrome day to day though because of the developer tools. Hopefully the project has some success because I appreciate the ethos behind it - empower users to capture some of their value from the attention economy.
- expiredtofu 8y ago
  How does Brave's performance compare to Chrome/FF with uBlock Origin? Are you saying the other browsers with adblock use more resources?
- polski-g 8y ago
  BAT is a really cool concept. They need to expand beyond Brave though.
nelsonbostrom 8y ago
How did they decide which ones to add? :)
- CyrusL 8y ago
  "In evaluating these assets for exploration, we relied as much as possible on the criteria in our published Digital Asset Framework, but found that many of the criteria required communication with external parties to fully evaluate." https://pro.coinbase.com/static/digital-asset-framework-2017-11.pdf https://pro.coinbase.com/static/digital-asset-framework-2017...
  - 1996 8y ago
    I find it interesting they added zcash but not monero
    - ChrisClark 8y ago
      They may have decided that deposits of zcash should be sent in the clear, not anonymously. I believe monero is always anonymous, so maybe they didn't want to deal with that?
    - exolymph 8y ago
      Zcash with only t-addr support is very similar to Bitcoin, on a technical level, and therefore may be easier for Coinbase's eng team to integrate.
    - Bombthecat 8y ago
      I'm more surprised about 0x though...
exolymph 8y ago
Disclosure: I work for the Zcash Foundation. If you're interested in learning more about how the cryptography in Zcash offers users robust financial privacy, check out the talks and slides from Zcon0: https://z.cash.foundation//blog/zcon0-recap/ https://z.cash.foundation//blog/zcon0-recap/ https://zkp.science/ https://zkp.science/ is also a great resource, as is the Zcash Company's FAQ: https://z.cash/support/faq.html#what-is-a-zero-knowledge-proof https://z.cash/support/faq.html#what-is-a-zero-knowledge-pro...
polski-g 8y ago
Really would be nice to support IOTA. Every other coin suffers from transaction speeds slowing down the more popular the coin is.
rch 8y ago
I'm sorry, but that reads like gibberish. I think I remember Zcash from my Keybase account, but now I'm going to associate it with these other experiments irrespective of how legitimate it might otherwise be.
cbHXBY1D 8y ago
ZRX is the odd-ball for me -- and I was an early investor. It's a governance token and it's not even needed to use with a decentralized exchange. In fact, a lot of exchanges aren't using it for fees. But it makes since ZRX is part of the list. Its been rumoured for a long time given Coinbase's relationship with members of the 0x team.
pandasun 8y ago
Why not Monero?
- tuesdayrain 8y ago
  Probably because it's not backdoored, unlike Zcash.
- 55555 8y ago
  They may be scared away. Maybe directly listing it would make them complicit in money laundering or something.
- SRTP 8y ago
  Probably because it's more difficult to build infrastructure for. As an example, the Ledger Nano hardware wallet still isn't compatible with Monero but is with ZCash, despite XMR being older and having a much larger market cap than ZEC. Also Gemini, another leading US exchange, added ZEC recently and Coinbase wanted to catch up.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
westoque 8y ago
Surprised why XRP (Ripple) is not here given that XLM (Stellar), an _almost_ similar protocol and functionality, is being considered.
- throwaway_009 8y ago
  It might have to do with the SEC? announcing XLM is not a security but things are not clear regarding XRP yet.
sAbakumoff 8y ago
Good time to buy on rumors...and then sell on news..
replies_to_all 8y ago
I'm buying BAT with every spare penny I have. 5 years ago I was a gadget fan boy, it makes me sick to think how much money I poured into those companies when I should have been saving. Now I'm a crypto "fanboy" and all my spare change goes to support projects I like.

131 points by andreygrehov 8y ago

In case you were wondering how this news affected the price of these assets (as of this posting): ADA +10.59% BAT +20.82% XLM +9.42% ZEC +15.18% 0x +23.40%

Klathmon 8y ago
And just for comparison (i'm using the last 24-hr numbers here): BTC +0.47% ETH +1.14% LTC +0.56%
yumraj 8y ago
Wonder if folks at Coinbase did or could have engaged in insider trading? And if they did, does it even fall under SEC jurisdiction or crypto currencies are in the wild West of insider trading?
- gangster_dave 8y ago
  This was probably the right thing to prevent insider trading. There was evidence of insider trading when Coinbase added BCH, so they might be just completely avoiding the risk of information leaks.
- justboxing 8y ago
  > Wonder if folks at Coinbase did or could have engaged in insider trading They'd be fools not to. Cryptocurrency trading is not regulated by SEC type entities (yet). Until it is regulated, you can get away with insider trading and even other activities like wash trading, painting the tape, pump and dump etc.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Until it is regulated, you can get away with insider trading You would have criminally mis-used Coinbase’s information which properly belongs to its shareholders. There is no statute against insider trading. It’s all a breach of fiduciary duties.
  - prantomone 8y ago
    Not true, you can go to jail for that stuff today. The moment there is a derivative (like a futures contract),the CFTC has jurisdiction (and has already sent subpoenas).
    - justboxing 8y ago
      > Not true, you can go to jail for that stuff today Source? Can you point to a single person prosecuted and sent to Jail for Cryptocurrency insider trading?
      - aik 8y ago
        I don't believe anyone has been caught yet. Coinbase was in trouble after the BCH situation though, both risking an investigation as well as hurting user and investor confidence.
- alttab 8y ago
  There was plenty of this and speculation thereof when it comes to the BCH launch in December[1]. [1] https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-insider-trading/ https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-inside...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dantiberian 8y ago
  This is why they are making the announcement now. I would suspect that only a few trusted people would have been involved in making the decision on which tokens to explore. They then made this announcement that they are exploring it at the same time as it was announced internally. > 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. This would hopefully avoid another class action lawsuit like they did with Bitcoin Cash: https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-insider-trading/ https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-inside....
granaldo 8y ago
Thing about announcement like this one is that the correction normally kick in immediately after the surge See chart https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zcash https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zcash https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/0x https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/0x https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token When prominent exchange like binance list coin it follows a complete dump.
- brendyn 8y ago
  I did a little bit of research on what happens to coins when they are listed on Binance, which you can see here: https://paste.debian.net/?show=1033668;lines=0 https://paste.debian.net/?show=1033668;lines=0 Roughly, coins would spike hard, then correct somewhat, but still generally be up heaps. I was shocked at how consistently coins would spike upon or days/weeks before being listed on Binance, so when NANO (then Raiblocks) was known to be soon listed, I traded some BTC for it and sure enough it spiked some 30% or so and I made a little bit off it. It was the only time I made money off crypto from an actual legitimate prediction based on evidence. The market seemed to just be scoffing at the idea of caring to be efficient (Weird-sounding finance vocabulary that basically means the price is already in equilibrium due to investors "already knowing" such obvious information, and traded with respect to it such that you still can't tell if the price is going to go up or down)

chrisco255 8y ago

BAT is an interesting choice. I'm a fan of Brave browser and it will be intriguing if BAT is able to pull off its mission of monetizing the internet while protecting privacy. I really hope they succeed.

gnarcoregrizz 8y ago

BAT is cool and the ad blocker in the Brave browser works really well. I use it on ad-heavy websites which burn up my computer on other browsers (which is any news site nowadays...). I still use Chrome day to day though because of the developer tools. Hopefully the project has some success because I appreciate the ethos behind it - empower users to capture some of their value from the attention economy.

expiredtofu 8y ago
How does Brave's performance compare to Chrome/FF with uBlock Origin? Are you saying the other browsers with adblock use more resources?
polski-g 8y ago
BAT is a really cool concept. They need to expand beyond Brave though.

nelsonbostrom 8y ago

How did they decide which ones to add? :)

CyrusL 8y ago
"In evaluating these assets for exploration, we relied as much as possible on the criteria in our published Digital Asset Framework, but found that many of the criteria required communication with external parties to fully evaluate." https://pro.coinbase.com/static/digital-asset-framework-2017-11.pdf https://pro.coinbase.com/static/digital-asset-framework-2017...
- 1996 8y ago
  I find it interesting they added zcash but not monero
  - ChrisClark 8y ago
    They may have decided that deposits of zcash should be sent in the clear, not anonymously. I believe monero is always anonymous, so maybe they didn't want to deal with that?
  - exolymph 8y ago
    Zcash with only t-addr support is very similar to Bitcoin, on a technical level, and therefore may be easier for Coinbase's eng team to integrate.
  - Bombthecat 8y ago
    I'm more surprised about 0x though...

exolymph 8y ago

Disclosure: I work for the Zcash Foundation. If you're interested in learning more about how the cryptography in Zcash offers users robust financial privacy, check out the talks and slides from Zcon0: https://z.cash.foundation//blog/zcon0-recap/ https://z.cash.foundation//blog/zcon0-recap/ https://zkp.science/ https://zkp.science/ is also a great resource, as is the Zcash Company's FAQ: https://z.cash/support/faq.html#what-is-a-zero-knowledge-proof https://z.cash/support/faq.html#what-is-a-zero-knowledge-pro...

polski-g 8y ago

Really would be nice to support IOTA. Every other coin suffers from transaction speeds slowing down the more popular the coin is.

rch 8y ago

I'm sorry, but that reads like gibberish. I think I remember Zcash from my Keybase account, but now I'm going to associate it with these other experiments irrespective of how legitimate it might otherwise be.

cbHXBY1D 8y ago

ZRX is the odd-ball for me -- and I was an early investor. It's a governance token and it's not even needed to use with a decentralized exchange. In fact, a lot of exchanges aren't using it for fees. But it makes since ZRX is part of the list. Its been rumoured for a long time given Coinbase's relationship with members of the 0x team.

pandasun 8y ago

Why not Monero?

tuesdayrain 8y ago
Probably because it's not backdoored, unlike Zcash.
55555 8y ago
They may be scared away. Maybe directly listing it would make them complicit in money laundering or something.
SRTP 8y ago
Probably because it's more difficult to build infrastructure for. As an example, the Ledger Nano hardware wallet still isn't compatible with Monero but is with ZCash, despite XMR being older and having a much larger market cap than ZEC. Also Gemini, another leading US exchange, added ZEC recently and Coinbase wanted to catch up.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

westoque 8y ago

Surprised why XRP (Ripple) is not here given that XLM (Stellar), an _almost_ similar protocol and functionality, is being considered.

throwaway_009 8y ago
It might have to do with the SEC? announcing XLM is not a security but things are not clear regarding XRP yet.

sAbakumoff 8y ago

Good time to buy on rumors...and then sell on news..

replies_to_all 8y ago

I'm buying BAT with every spare penny I have. 5 years ago I was a gadget fan boy, it makes me sick to think how much money I poured into those companies when I should have been saving. Now I'm a crypto "fanboy" and all my spare change goes to support projects I like.