The Coinbase Effect

It’s been almost two weeks since Coinbase announced that they’re exploring the addition of 5 new coins:

• Cardano (ADA)
• Basic Attention Token (BAT)
• Stellar Lumens (XLM)
• Zcash (ZEC)
• Ox (ZRX)

Unlike their announcement of adding Ethereum Classic, these assets have no guarantee that they will be listed for trading.

Nevertheless, the announcement of Coinbase considering adding these coins has not gone unnoticed on cryptomarkets.

However, some have seen much higher gains than others, as seen in the table below.

As it stands, Stellar Lumens has had the biggest gains of the 5 coins announced.

Jumping 78% since the announcement by Coinbase and currently, at a market cap of $6billion, Stellar Lumens is also the biggest of the 5.

The smallest gains have been made with Basic Attention Token (BAT), only increasing 19% and currently having a market cap of $326 million.

However, all 5 of the coins still have a long way to go before reaching their “all-time high” set during the height of the cryptomarkets (December 2017 – January 2018).

All 5 of the coins have seen dramatic losses since their "All Time High".

Cardano has since the biggest decrease (-87%) followed by Zcash (-76%), Basic Attention Token (-67%), Stellar Lumens (-66%), and 0x (-55%).

It's difficult to predict the cryptocurrency markets, as prices change and fluctuate greatly every day. However, one could still assume if either one of these coins does get added to Coinbase, they will since massive gains.

As it stands, Coinbase currently trades Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The addition of Ethereum Classic has also been confirmed to be ongoing. The addition of one the newly announced coins will definitely make a big impact on the service. They will be the cheapest ones available on a list of exclusive coins, making their purchase much easier for the mainstream Crypto user.

Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchanged located in San Francisco, California. The service can be used to exchange Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin with fiat currencies.

The company was founded by the Brain Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam in 2012.

Coinbase is currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S.

The cryptocurrency market is a very volatile place. When Coinbase first announced the news of the addition of new coins, the markets reacted well. At the time, the markets were on a downturn since the all-time highs (ATH) that were achieved in early January 2018. But with the Coinbase announcement some coins such as ADA, BAT, XLM, ZEX, ZRX saw some growth in their prices.

However, it seems that a month after my last update the growth of the coins was not sustained and the markets, as well as the announced coins, have all gonna down further from their all-time highs they achieved in January 2018.

As you can see in the table above, all five coins have again fallen and backtracked any gains they made during the announcement. The biggest loser of the five is Cardano (ADA) having lost 47% followed by Zcash (39%), Ox (36%), Basic Attention Token (34%) and Stellar Lumens (34%).

Most of the coins have also gone below the price they had before the announcement with the exception of Stellar Lumens, which was 0.19usd at the time and currently is worth 0.21usd.

The cryptocurrency markets further continue to decline since the record all-time highs in January. Cardano (ADA) is seen as the biggest loser, down 93% since ATH followed by Zcash (85%), Basic Attention Token (78%) Stellar Lumens (78%), and Ox (71%).

It's difficult to actually pinpoint one main reason for the decline in prices, as this decline isn't just exclusive to the announced coins but a general problem in the current cryptocurrency market.

Reasons could range from the crackdown ICOs, changes in regulations in countries around the world and the fail of Bitcoin ETFs.

The Coinbase exchange has seen its trading volume plummet around 83% this year, while top crypto exchanges such as Binance and OKEx have seen their volumes surge.

Moreover, the number of downloads of the Coinbase app has also seemed to have taken a hit, as crypto prices continue to fall.

The decline of Coinbase's volume may be attributed to various factors but overall could be due to the lack of choice on the platform compared to other exchanges like Binance which has hundreds of coins listed compared to Coinbase's current 5.

The decline of Coinbase's trading volume and app downloads also raises the question regarding its importance for the announced coins in terms of rising prices with their addition on the platform.

However only time will tell on how the general public will react to the new additions. The addition of one of the announced coins could make a big impact on the service. They will be the cheapest ones available on a list of exclusive coins, making their purchase much easier for the mainstream Crypto user.

• Cardano (ADA): https://www.cardano.org/en/home/
• Basic Attention Token (BAT): https://basicattentiontoken.org/
• Stellar Lumens (XLM): https://www.stellar.org/
• Zcash (ZEC): https://z.cash/
• 0x (ZRX): https://0xproject.com/