UPDATED 21:24 EDT / JULY 15 2018

EMERGING TECH

Coinbase explores adding support for five new cryptocurrencies

Coinbase Inc. said Friday that it was looking at adding support for five new cryptocurrencies to its exchange service as it continues to grow its service into more obscure coins and tokens.

The company, the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. market, occasionally considers adding support from new cryptocurrencies from time to time. But after its Bitcoin Cash debacle, during which Coinbase was accused of insider trading, it’s now being immediately upfront about any cryptos it’s looking at.

Gaining consideration by Coinbase for future support are Cardano (ADA), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Zcash (ZEC) and 0x (ZRX).

Unless you’re really a cryptofan, most if not all of those cryptocurrencies will be unknown to you. But of the five, the best-known is BAT — not necessarily by name but the publicity its launch was given. As its name suggested, BAT is an attention token, a token rewarded for paying attention.

In this case, it’s the cryptocurrency tied to former Mozilla Foundation Chief Executive Officer Brendan Eich’s Brave web browser. Brave, controversially, replaces ads on sites viewed within the browser with its own ads and users of the browser are awarded BAT’s in return for viewing the ads.

Of the others, Zcash has had some attention, both positive and negative. The Winklevoss Twins’ Gemini Exchange added support for the cryptocurrency in May, but it’s also a popular crypto among hackers for its privacy features, though less than Monero.

Although Coinbase is considering adding support for the five cryptocurrencies, it’s not a necessarily a given that all five will pass the test. In a post on Medium, Coinbase listed a number of issues facing the introduction of the new cryptocurrencies, stating upfront that the “assets will require additional exploratory work and we cannot guarantee they will be listed for trading.”

Moreover, it added, “our listing process may result in some of these assets being listed solely for customers to buy and sell, without the ability to send or receive using a local wallet.” Coinbase added that “we may also only enable certain ways to interact with these assets through our site, such as supporting only deposits and withdrawals from transparent Zcash addresses.”

No timeframe was given for the review process, but Coinbase noted that customers “may see public-facing APIs and other signs that we are conducting engineering work to support these assets.”

Image: JonRussell/Flickr

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