BLOCKCHAIN
BLOCKCHAIN
BLOCKCHAIN
Price of Ripple XRP cryptocurrency surges as Coinbase announces support
Coinbase Inc., the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, today announced it’s adding trading support for Ripple XRP.
Initially, XRP trading will be available to Coinbase Pro customers in the U.S. (except New York), the United Kingdom, parts of the European Union, Canada, Singapore and Australia, with more support to follow.
Starting today, support starts with inbound transfers of XRP to Coinbase Pro, followed by support for XRP/USD, XRP/EUR, and XRP/BTC order books and full trading when Coinbase decides it has enough XRP in wallets for a “healthy market.”
Coinbase Pro, previously GDAX, is Coinbase’s professional offering targeted at active cryptocurrency traders. It includes support for services such as staking and protocol voting.
Coinbase has long been recalcitrant in not supporting XRP despite the cryptocurrency’s ongoing popularity, ostensibly because of the uncertainty around the status of XRP as a cryptocurrency or a stablecoin.
Released in 2012, Ripple XRP was founded as a cryptocurrency that could be used for financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks. XRP differs from other cryptocurrencies in that it can’t be mined and its release and volume are controlled only by Ripple, causing some to call it “not a real cryptocurrency.”
Competitors to Ripple in the financial transactions market primarily consist of stablecoins, which are tokens or coins usually linked to the U.S. dollar. However, Ripple openly floated XRP with its value moving along with bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies over time.
Because of its strange positioning, pitched as a financial transaction service but also free-floating, XRP is not without controversy, given that it’s difficult to classify it as a cryptocurrency or a security.
As Fortune noted, “Coinbase is evidently no longer waiting for regulators to decide whether XRP qualifies as an unregistered security before offering it to the public. XRP skeptics have long noted that authorities such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could bring a hammer down on Ripple and other sellers of cryptocurrency.”
Although it’s down the list of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by volume, Coinbase is the largest exchange in the U.S. Its adding support for Ripple XRP was well-received by cryptocurrency investors. Ripple XRP was up almost 10 percent over the last 24 hours and was trading at 33.3376 cents as of 9:20 p.m. EST.
Photo: 30478819@N08/Flickr
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