Coinbase has stunned the cryptocurrency world once again with a fresh announcement that the exchange has begun what they call exploratory research on adding five new assets. A few of those assets come as a surprise, while others seem to have been nearly a given for some time now given their general growth.
The Five Suspect Lineup
It’s important to note before we begin that Coinbase as stated in no uncertain terms that there are no guarantees that any of these assets will be added at all. Instead, the company stated that they will begin officially researching these assets and whether or not they can be added from both a technological perspective and a legal one.
The lineup of assets currently undergoing investigation include Cardano, Basic Attention Token, Zcash, 0x, and Stellar Lumens. One asset that is notably absent, however, is the infamous Ripple XRP.
XRP Supporters Furious
When Coinbase announced recently that they would be including Ethereum Classic, the announcement was met with an outcry of frustrated investors that were expecting the next asset to be added would be XRP. This time is no different as XRP fans are once again expressing their fury and discontent.
One user on Twitter even suggested that all XRP investors “delete Coinbase” as the exchange has not demonstrated any interest in adding their asset of choice.
Why are you not even considering #XRP? WTF? From now on, I am telling XRP community, the BIGGEST crypto community, to delete Coinbase. pic.twitter.com/qsxKj2IViR
— Bull Diep (@DiepSanh) July 13, 2018
And another disappointed XRP believer:
https://twitter.com/MarselFejzaj/status/1017871362839498752
Another interesting point was a large number of Tweets asking for various other assets to be added in the future, with more than a dozen users asking for the exchange to consider adding DigiByte, and a handful of requests for assets like Verge.
Questions about Zcash Privacy
Zcash is unique among all assets being offered or considered by Coinbase as it does allow for completely anonymous transactions. Zcash transactions are not anonymous by default, but with the correct wallet, transactions can be made that are currently untraceable.
Read also: How to Mine ZCash
Suggestions have been made that perhaps Coinbase will only accept deposits of Zcash that come from non-anonymized sources. Specifically, the post says:
We may also only enable certain ways to interact with these assets through our site, such as supporting only deposits and withdrawals from transparent Zcash addresses.
Further, the blog post announcing the exploration of the new assets stated that it is possible that not all assets will be available for trading in all areas, or even that some assets can only be bought and sold within the platform, but withdrawals and deposits would not be allowed.
Currently, Coinbase has not made any statements detailing exactly how this would work as we are still in the early stages.
Ethereum Classic On the Way
The blog post also included a section providing some additional information about the upcoming launch of Ethereum Classic trading support.
The article stated that Ethereum classic is already a confirmed asset and will be made available once it is ready. Unlike these five assets announced today that are only in an exploratory phase, Ethereum classic does not require as much work as it is technically virtually identical to Ethereum, and asset that the exchange is supported for quite some time now.
The Medium post in question states:
We are underway with engineering work to add Ethereum Classic (ETC), and it is proceeding as planned. We are making this announcement so that we can begin the next phase of work to explore adding more assets to the platform.
The Markets Respond
Following the announcement from Coinbase, all five of the assets that are being explored by Coinbase saw sharp price jumps, with some jumping as much as 25% after the announcement.
It is conceivable that we will see more general upward movement like Ethereum Classic has had since its announcement. However it is still entirely possible that some or even all of these assets will not end up being added to Coinbase, or may only be added in a highly simplified manner.
We suspect that in the coming days, the price jump that we saw today will slowly even out and will only appear again once Coinbase officially confirms which assets are being included.
