Coinbase, one of the oldest and most prominent cryptocurrency exchanges currently on the market has recently announced plans to add Ripple (XRP) to its list of virtual coins on its Coinbase Pro branch.
According to the official statement, “support for XRP will initially be available for Coinbase Pro users in the US (excluding NY), UK, supported European Union member nations, Canada, Singapore, and Australia. Additional jurisdictions may be added at a later date.”
Starting with February 25th, Coinbase started accepting inbound transfers of XRP to Coinbase Pro. According to the company, it will accept deposits for at least 12 hours before the full trading process starts in order to ensure the proper liquidity and to avoid potential market manipulation.
The company also notes that “once sufficient supply of XRP is established on the platform, trading on the XRP/USD, XRP/EUR, and XRP/BTC order books will start in phases, beginning with post-only mode and proceeding to full trading should our metrics for a healthy market be met.”
Why just now?
Well, for starters, it might have to do with the pressure of the public. “One of the most common requests we receive from customers is to be able to trade more assets on our platform,” Coinbase wrote in a blog post announcing the news. “We anticipate supporting more assets that meet our standards over time,” the company further explained.
During the last few years, there has been intense speculation as to why Coinbase has been avoiding Ripple with such vehemence. There are a lot more complications and implications than meet the eye at first.
There are some that thing that Coinbase’s reluctance to add Ripple up until now is because the company wants to avoid similar backlash as what occurred with Bitcoin Cash a while ago. Other rumors suggest that Coinbase might actually be worried about XRP’s potential securities classification with its associated company, Ripple.
