After Coinbase announced that it would review some 30-plus crypto assets for listing, the crypto community launched a word-war against it.
The conservative US exchange, which operates under the strict watch of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed the names of these tokens in a recent announcement on Friday. While the new assets include prominent names like XRP and Stellar Lumens, yet some of them – it must be said – are relatively unreliable. The community accused Coinbase of acting out of desperation, stating that the exchange is ready to lose its self-esteem as its market share dwindles.
Larry Cermak, head analyst at the Block, sent out a series of tweets, with each one of them signifying how Coinbase is looking at a potential business disaster “unless there is a bull market.” In one of these tweets, Cermak said that low volumes on the US trading platform had invoked them to list even underperforming projects (otherwise known as “shitcoins” among the crypto population).
I hope Coinbase realizes that several months after raising a $100M ICO, the Kik founder called blockchain ”unconvincing”. Yet their coin is still on the shortlist…
Bonus points for anyone who can count how many of these have active class action lawsuits against them?
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) December 7, 2018
Gabor Gurbacs, the chief digital assets strategist at VanEck, whose Bitcoin ETF currently awaits approval from the SEC, criticized Coinbase for outright rejecting their institutional investment product, but still adding support for bad projects in their own retail platform.
Coinbase shitcoins OK for millions of retail investors. Bitcoin ETF for institutional investors too crazy. What f*ing parallel universe is this? 🤦♂️🤯
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) December 7, 2018
FOMO
Earlier this year, Coinbase renewed its policy for how it decides whether or not to add a crypto asset. The company tests the tokens based on certain objective factors, which includes security, compliance and what it believes to be the potential to change the financial world.
Nevertheless, the company was speaking from a strong position at that time, having been holding a huge chunk of bitcoins and Ethers at their prime values. It didn’t feel that it was important to list other assets, as because the SEC also pardoned both bitcoin and ether from following its infamously old securities law. Coinbase started losing market share only when other exchanges in the US market started expanding their crypto portfolios by adding more assets.
Coinbase first announced that it would explore XRP, the world’s second largest crypto asset by adjusted market cap, for a potential listing. The company later delayed its decision for months, stating that it could not verify whether XRP is a utility token or security. It continues to play hide-and-seek when it comes to giving its final decision on the matter, fuming many XRP believers in the process.
However, the company could start listing these assets more quickly than ever.
EDadoun, an XRP-advocate on Twitter, pointed to how Coinbase, after months of sleep, is beginning to increase the number of digital assets it would potentially list. His tweets hinted Coinbase as an exchange that was having a FOMO moment (as in Fear of Missing Out).
https://twitter.com/EDadoun/status/1071063296776650757
Another tweet from Crypto Bobby shared a similar sentiment.
Coinbase went from the most conservative company in crypto to YOLO in like 6 months https://t.co/ndwF5wtb4t
— Rob Paone (@crypto_bobby) December 7, 2018
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, said in October that they were looking to include more crypto assets to their trading platform, adding that they aim to become the New York Stock Exchange of cryptos.
“We want to be the bridge all over the world where people come, and they take fiat currency, and they can get it into these different cryptocurrencies,” he had said during the recent TechCrunch Disrupt event.