Daily Archives: May 31, 2022

Tl;dr: Coinbase’s goal is to provide a neutral marketplace where customers can engage with every safe and compliant crypto asset. As part of this effort, we have always ensured that listing an asset on Coinbase is completely free of all fees and prerequisite costs.

By Surojit Chatterjee

The goal of Coinbase’s exchange is to provide a neutral marketplace where customers can engage with every safe and compliant crypto asset. To support those assets transparently and equitably, we have spent years honing a consistent listing process that creates a level playing field for all the new assets being created in crypto.

As part of our efforts to level the playing field, listing an asset on Coinbase is, and has always been, free. We don’t charge listing or application fees to asset issuers. Unlike many exchanges, we also don’t charge prerequisite asset marketing fees or require issuers to adopt Coinbase’s other services. Some have speculated otherwise, but it is simply not true.

How our asset listing process works
Our philosophy is to list every safe and compliant asset — we’re not here to pick winners or losers. We are committed to protecting consumers, however, so we have a rigorous asset evaluation process in place to ensure assets meet our eligibility requirements. Here’s a quick summary of our fee-free asset evaluation and listing process:

1. Apply. Asset issuers start by creating an account in our Asset Hub and submitting an application with all relevant information about their asset.
2. Evaluate. Coinbase’s Digital Asset Listing Group (DALG) evaluates the information submitted via Asset Hub using our standard listing evaluation framework to ensure the asset meets the eligibility requirements for our legal, compliance, and technical security reviews.
3. List. Once approved by DALG and integrated with our platform, the asset can be listed on our exchange. Being listed on the exchange does not mean that Coinbase endorses the asset, but that it meets Coinbase’s listing requirements.
4. Monitor. We constantly monitor all assets on our exchange and may de-list assets if they stop meeting our requirements, or if new information becomes available.

Today, Coinbase offers over 212 assets for custody and 166 assets for trading. We are not in the business of providing investment advice, but we do believe education is critical to help the average investor decipher between the many assets on our platform. To help foster learning and education, Coinbase Earn is an invaluable tool for users to earn rewards and learn about different assets available on our platform.

How Coinbase Earn works

Once an asset is listed on Coinbase, asset issuers have the at-will opportunity to launch campaigns to educate users about their asset. Coinbase takes a small fee for facilitating these campaigns, but whether or not an Earn campaign is expected has no impact on whether or not the asset will be approved by our listing process. Here’s how it works:

1. Inquire. Asset issuers get in touch with our Earn team generally via our website or a referral, to learn more about how they can increase awareness and engagement for their asset.
2. Design. Coinbase and the asset issuer work together to design a bespoke educational campaign for users.
3. Launch. Coinbase launches the campaign on our website and in our retail app. Unlike direct marketing campaigns, Earn campaigns are passive, and users choose to interact at their own will.
4. Earn. When users engage with the campaign, Coinbase distributes funds to the engaging users. Coinbase receives a small proportional distribution fee when these funds are distributed.

Users have found great value in our Earn products, and we’ve seen tremendous traction with millions of users engaging with the educational content to date. Education is a key part of our efforts to build a more open, accessible financial system, and we will continue to innovate in this space as we work to list every safe and compliant crypto asset for our users.

Bitcoin exchange outflows have been turning for the better recently. What had predicated this was a long week of inflows surpassing outflows, solidifying the fact that it was a seller’s market. However, the tide has begun to turn as the Monday numbers are in. Bitcoin exchange outflows have now surpassed inflows by a large margin. 

Investors Are Accumulating

Glassnode has published exchange inflow and outflow data which points toward an accumulation trend among investors. For the start of the week, the inflows into centralized exchanges had touched $1.1 billion, a high number. But the outflows came out even higher. Bitcoin investors have moved $1.4 billion out of centralized exchanges in the last day. This has resulted in a negative net flow of -$325.3 million.

Related Reading | Negative Sentiment Deepens In Crypto, Why Recovery May Not Last

The same trend was recorded across the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, whose net flow had come out to the negative as well. In total, there was $476 million worth of ETH moving into exchanges. However, $487 million were moved out of exchanges, bringing the negative net flow to -$11 million.

This trend also mirrors that recorded in the Tether UST net flows. Inflows have surpassed outflows by more than $126 million, indicating that more investors are choosing to accumulate more cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum and moving out of stablecoins such as USDT.

📊 Daily On-Chain Exchange Flow#Bitcoin $BTC
➡️ $1.1B in
⬅️ $1.4B out
📉 Net flow: -$325.3M#Ethereum $ETH
➡️ $476.0M in
⬅️ $487.0M out
📉 Net flow: -$11.0M#Tether (ERC20) $USDT
➡️ $510.1M in
⬅️ $383.7M out
📈 Net flow: +$126.4M

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) May 31, 2022

Bitcoin Whales Not Left Out

It is no surprise that bitcoin whales are often seen accumulating when the price of the digital asset is down. For most, this presents an opportunity for them to get as many coins as they can at a discounted price, causing them to increase their holdings significantly.

This time around, the number of addresses holding more than 10K BTC has seen one of the most apparent accumulation trends. It reached a new all-time high and there are now 97 BTC addresses holding more than 10,000 BTC in them, marking a new 15-month high.

BTC price reverses as it drops to $31,500 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

The number of addresses holding more than 0.1 BTC has also reached a new all-time high. This number has risen to 3,525,636, suggesting that not only are the whales accumulating, but smaller bitcoin addresses are also jumping in on the action.

Related Reading | Billionaire Tim Draper On What Will Trigger The Next Bitcoin Bull Market

Active supply has also declined significantly and is now sitting at a six-month low. There has been a little over 1.19 million BTC that have been active in the last 1-3 months. The previous low was 1.2 million BTC which was recorded at the beginning of December 2021.

Bitcoin is trading at $31,700 at the time of this writing. The recovery trend which had begun on Monday continues to grow stronger causing the digital asset to cement its position above $31,000.

Featured image from VOI, chart from TradingView.com

Follow Best Owie on Twitter for market insights, updates, and the occasional funny tweet… 

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched Project Guardian, a blockchain-based digital assets trial that will use tokenization. The project will include regulated financial institutions serving as “trust anchors,” with a pilot involving JP Morgan, DBS Bank and Marketnode, the SGX joint venture for bonds.

The Project Guardian initiative, which was announced during the Asia Tech x Singapore Summit on Tuesday, was spearheaded by Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies Heng Swee Keat. It will see MAS explore decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in wholesale funding markets by establishing a liquidity pool of tokenized bonds and deposits to execute borrowing and lending on a public blockchain-based network.

According to MAS chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty, lessons from Project Guardian will serve as a basis for informing policy markets on the regulatory guard rails that are required to utilize DeFi while also mitigating its hazards.

Both DBS and JPMorgan have experience developing digital assets and blockchain technology in their wholesale banking operations. Last year, DBS launched an $11 million digital bond in a security token offering (STO). Since its inception in 2020, JPMorgan’s Onyx Digital Assets Network has completed over $300 billion of transactions.

Related: Singapore aims to streamline financial watchdog’s authority over crypto firms

DBS Bank has been active in the cryptocurrency industry for several years, establishing its own institutional-grade crypto exchange in December 2020. The firm has been progressively enhancing the range of supported digital asset services on the exchange, with a crypto trust solution debuting in May 2021.

MAS has taken the lead in exploring the future of finance with DeFi protocols, becoming one of the few major regulators to do so. If it succeeds, it might help Singapore cement its position as a global financial center.

For a few weeks now, bitcoin sentiment stemming from the Crypto Fear and Greed Index (CFGI) has been in the “extreme fear” range. While bitcoin gathered some gains on Monday, the CFGI is still in the “extreme fear” position with a ranking score of 16 out of 100.

Crypto Fear and Greed Index Remains in ‘Extreme Fear’

Approximately 45 days ago, the Crypto Fear and Greed Index (CFGI) hit the “extreme fear” range with a score of 22. That day, on April 15, the 24-hour bitcoin price range was between $39,823.77 and $40,709.11 per unit. Since then markets tumbled even lower and on May 12, the value of BTC tapped a low at $25,401, which was lower than the previous bottom last summer in July. If someone purchased BTC on May 12, today they would be up more than 24% against the U.S. dollar.

Despite the gains during the past two weeks, the CFGI is still in the “extreme fear” zone and the ranking is even lower than it was on April 15. At the time of writing, the CFGI ranking score is 16 out of 100, but it doesn’t necessarily mean markets will remain gloomy. The CFGI hosted on alternative.me measures market sentiment and the website notes there are two simple assumptions:

• Extreme fear can be a sign that investors are too worried. That could be a buying opportunity.
• When Investors are getting too greedy, that means the market is due for a correction.

However, extreme fear can also lead to more capitulation and the so-called buying opportunity may be much lower. Or one could also assume the current time frame is a tiered buying opportunity and people are happy with purchasing BTC on the way down. The CFGI’s simple assumptions are just that, as they may be accepted as truths, but they may not end up coming to fruition.

On the same token, if “investors are getting too greedy,” as the CFGI says, it doesn’t necessarily mean crypto markets will correct. This means if someone took such advice they could be selling BTC at a lower point than what they could have made by waiting. Then again, there’s always the age-old investment advice that says there’s nothing wrong with taking profits along the way.

Crypto market sentiment, at least according to the CFGI, has been in the “extreme fear” region for well over a month. Yesterday, on May 30, the index tapped a ranking score of 10, which means the latest CFGI score of 16 is an improvement. Google Trends metrics for the query “bitcoin” show interest has ticked up from the recent Terra fiasco.

Interestingly, Google Trends (GT) data worldwide indicates that interest in bitcoin was meandering for a while before the Terra LUNA and UST fallout. But during that specific week (May 8-14), GT data shows the search term “bitcoin” skyrocketed to the highest GT score (100) since the second week of June 2021. The week after the Terra LUNA and UST market carnage, however, the GT data score for the term “bitcoin” dropped by 45%.

What do you think about the Crypto Fear and Greed Index tapping a score of 16 and remaining in the “extreme fear” zone? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.