US based largest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, announces adding support to ERC20 tokens in the coming months.
In recent days, ERC20 assets aka ERC20 tokens have become very popular. ERC20 is a technical standard used for Ethereum smart contracts. Many projects with a hope of decentralized utility program, are being built on top of Ethereum blockchain. Due to no support in past, a Coinbase customer couldn't save their ERC20 asset or participate in any ICO. Now, Coinbase Ethereum wallet and Dapp browser Toshi added native support for ERC20.
"We’re excited to announce our intention to support the Ethereum ERC20 technical standard for Coinbase in the coming months. This paves the way for supporting ERC20 assets across Coinbase products in the future, though we aren’t announcing support for any specific assets or features at this time. We are announcing this both internally and to the public as consistent with our process for adding new assets."
Being in the world of cryptocurrency for so long, Coinbase has provided a wide range of products and extending ERC20 support mean differently. As per the announcement,
- Coinbase Custody — Custody team is evaluating a set of assets to support for deposits and withdrawals and will likely support more assets than those available to trade on GDAX or Coinbase for the foreseeable future.
- GDAX — GDAX team will wait for additional regulatory clarity before deciding which ERC20 assets to support on GDAX.
- Coinbase Asset Management — As per the index methodology, any asset listed on GDAX will be added to the Coinbase Index on a market capitalization weighted basis.
- Coinbase — Coinbase will only list assets after they are listed on GDAX. After evaluating factors such as liquidity, price stability, and other market health metrics, they may choose to add any ERC20 asset added to GDAX to the Coinbase platform. GDAX will likely have more assets listed on the platform than the Coinbase platform, i.e. listing on GDAX does not guarantee listing on Coinbase.
- Coinbase Commerce — no planned ERC20 support at this time.
As of now, Coinbase supports Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and BitcoinCash (BCH). Coinbase initially didn't support UAHF and BitcoinCash but later in Dec 2018 announced adding support to BitcoinCash. After that up till March 16, 2018, Coinbase said that "The internal asset selection committee has been assessing assets using our Digital Asset Framework, but no assets have been recommended to the Coinbase executive team." Now, the sudden announcement of supporting ERC20 assets is a big boost to Ethereum and supporting projects.
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