Speculation Behind ZCash Listing On Coinbase

Almost immediately after Ethereum Classic was listed on Coinbase back in August, the exchange had five other digital assets in its crosshairs which included, ZCash, 0x, BAT, Cardano and Stellar. During October, Coinbase listed 0x and in early November they went onto list the Basic Attention Token. One theory believes that the exchange is swayed towards listing ERC20 tokens such as ZRK and BAT because of the ease of implementing the two with the platform which already supports Ethereum. Now, this would explain why the exchange chose the two digital assets first.

Earlier in the week, Coinbase Pro revealed that it was now listing ZEC. This news came as a surprise to many crypto investors and traders who believed Stellar was next in line after BAT and ZRX.

Considering the exchange doesn’t give any reasons behind their choice of listings, we will look into why Coinbase decided to list ZEC before they listed Stellar. There are two speculative possibilities as to why this has happened.

Gemini

As reported by Ethereum World News, the first reasons could date back to when the Winklevoss Twins decided to list ZCash on their exchange, Gemini Exchange:

“The exchange also placed ZEC as one of its leading digital assets as it was paired with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. A month later in mid-June, Coinbase announced that it had interest in listing the 5 aforementioned digital assets.”

With this in mind, it doesn’t come as a surprise that ZCash was first in the queue after Ethereum Classics listing given the listing by the Winklevoss’ listing but a month later. In a sense, Coinbase was trying to ‘one-up’ the competition.

Demand

If you consider the fact that Gemini already had a head-start on Coinbase by offering ZEC to institutional clients, it makes sense that Coinbase would most likely want to list the cryptocurrency, one reason being for demand and the other to try and get ahead of Gemini. If the Winklevoss exchange was offering ZEC since May this year then some institutional clients wanted to do business with Coinbase probably asked about ZCash and the exchange to do the same half a year later.

The real reasons behind why ZCash was listed on Coinbase Pro before Stellar and Cardano is still a mystery but it’s a question worth pondering.

“The first one being that Coinbase wants to complete with the Gemini Exchange that had been offering ZEC to institutional clients since May. The second reason being the demand from institutional investors as a result of Gemini already offering ZEC for close to 6 months. Coinbase was sure to get requests to support ZEC and the team at the exchange complied with these requests.”