Crypto exchange Coinbase has generated controversy due to its listing process. The platform recently posted a list of possible projects to include which, according to pseudonym user PastryETH, makes some wonder if Coinbase is “willfully ignorant, or intentionally deceiving?”.
Related Reading | Arthur Hayes’ Crystal Ball Predicts: Bitcoin And Ethereum To See Carnage In June
Some of the projects were created before 2020 and have a dubious reputation. Amongst these tokens is Big Data Protocol (BDP), Pastry said. This project managed to attract over $6 billion in total value locked (TVL) and generate a lot of hype.
This allowed BDP whales to “dump” their tokens on retail investors, as discovered by Igor Igamberdiev, The Block’s director of research. As Pastry noted:
These addresses farmed massive amounts of $BDP and dumped it on LPs in BDP’s Pool2 which rewarded users with $bAlpha for providing liquidity to BDP/ETH. It was exit liquidity for whales. The BDP token feel from $13 to $3, while bAlpha dumped from $25k to $5k.
Second on the list is BOTTO which, the pseudonym user said, has a market cap of around $4 million. Therefore, could see high volatility and an illiquid market cap to the detriment of its potential traders. Pastry asked the following about Coinbase’s prospects:
Really, Coinbase? Are you not aware of the risks you expose thousands of traders to by listing a project that is so small and illiquid? Coinbase does $327 BILLION in quarterly trading volume, yet they want to list a project with a market cap of $4m. Irresponsible.
The same goes for $KROMATIK another of Coinbase’s potential crypto to add to its platform. The token has a small market of under $10 million. Pastry questioned the rise in its trading volume just days before Coinbase’s announcement.
Is Coinbase Purposely Listing “Crypto Scams”?
MONA and PMON made the list. The former has a small market cap with a daily trading volume of around $10,000 which, Pastry emphasized, could be hurtful for the users.
On the other hand, PMON is a project dubbed “one of the largest marketing failures this bull-run, by Zachxbt a popular investigator. Similar to BDP, this token was used by insiders to dump on retail investors, according to Pastry.
On the list, there was also RAC a token with a $0 trading volume, and Student Coin (STC) a project with a similar trading volume. The list is comprised of mostly unknown crypto, according to the pseudonym user, with high probabilities of hurting the users due to low trading volume or illiquid markets.
Responding to the question of whether the exchange is listing out of “ignorance or malice”, Pastry said, he referred to evidence of a potential Coinbase insider purchasing large amounts of the tokens before the listing announcements. Presented by influencer Cobie.
Found an ETH address that bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens exclusively featured in the Coinbase Asset Listing post about 24 hours before it was published, rofl pic.twitter.com/5QlVTjl0Jp
— Cobie (@cobie) April 12, 2022
Pastry concluded:
Coinbase, If you want to maintain what little relevancy you have left, I recommend you hire a new listing department ASAP (direct messages are open, by the way). You are listing utter trash and subjecting thousands of your users to unnecessary risk in the process. Do better.
Related Reading | TA: Ethereum Steadies Above $3K, Why Upsides Could be Capped
At the time of writing, ETH trades at $3,000 with a 1.4% profit in the last hour.
