Coinbase starts trading Dogecoin
The joke coin gets real as Coinbase and LocalBitcoins add DOGE to their lists of tradeable cryptos
Centralised US crypto exchanges Coinbase and LocalBitcoins have capitalised on Dogecoin’s newfound popularity by adding it to their respective lists of trade-able digital assets.
A Coinbase blog post last month said the exchange’s Pro users could start transferring DOGE into their accounts and trade it from 3rd June.
Dogecoin has moved steadily up the charts in recent months to become the seventh-biggest cryptocurrency, boasting a market cap of USD 43.6 billion. The price of DOGE is also up, posting gains in late June of between 5 and 7 per cent.
With recent cryptocurrency market volatility, those kinds of returns might seem unimpressive. Still, they represent the most significant upward movement for any token. In contrast, Bitcoin and Ethereum were both down at the time of writing.
What’s making DOGE bark?
Dogecoin started life as a joke, playing on the mix of fear and hyper-enthusiasm that initially followed Bitcoin as it first gained fame and notoriety.
DOGE was in the doldrums until this year, largely unnoticed and worth less than a penny (US). Then Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban started promoting DOGE for its transactional capabilities. That moved the price past USD 0.73 in May.
While it’s been listed on many exchanges, it’s found the most trading traction on the Robinhood mobile app, where it’s one of just seven crypto assets the company lists.
Adding Coinbase to its roster of exchanges may improve DOGE’s prospects further. In terms of daily crypto trading volume, numbers from Nomics have Coinbase in the global top five. In the US, it’s the go-to exchange for American crypto traders.
LocalBitcoins joins the Dogecoin party
Following Coinbase’s announcement, peer-to-peer trading platform LocalBitcoins is also adding Dogecoin, taking its first steps beyond BTC as it branches out to attract a bigger customer base, adapt to an evolving crypto market, and enter the world of altcoins.
The exchange will also support payments with Polkadot (DOT), Tether (USDT), Cardano (ADA), USD Coin (USDC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Chainlink (LINK).
Also via a blog post, LocalBitcoins announced more than 40 alternative payment methods such as MercadoPago, Chime, AirTM, Uphold, and PIX in Brazil.
LocalBitcoins is up against Paxful when it comes to P2P platform popularity. It has a significant footprint in Latin America, where it’s become the top option in many LatAm countries. Legal restrictions have forced Paxful to suspend operations in Venezuela, the country with one of the highest crypto adoption rates on the planet.
Crypto traders choose peer-to-peer exchanges for numerous reasons, but trading windows designed to reduce exposure to market volatility are one sure reason, along with the ability to make secure and immediate deposits into trading accounts.
By embracing Dogecoin, LocalBitcoins can arguably strengthen its competitive differentiation against insurgents likes Binance P2P, launched by the world’s biggest crypto exchange. Binance P2P is growing quickly and already supports numerous altcoins.
Binance posted USD 4.1 billion in trading volume on its P2P exchange last year. Data from Coin Dance has LocalBitcoins’ volume at close to USD 2 trillion. Paxful captured USD 1.6 trillion.
The first ‘joke coin’ gets real
The moves by Coinbase and LocalBitcoins have bestowed new legitimacy on DOGE, putting the meme-inspired coin invented in 2013 on the path to mainstream adoption.
While memes have humorous intent, in an age of digital and often visual discourse, they can shape conversations and mould collective ideas. Memes can now move markets, and Dogecoin is a perfect example.
Its founders used a popular meme that used an image of a Japanese Shiba Inu hunting dog with raised eyebrows. It’s been so successful that DOGE has inspired new comedy-meme coins like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Akita Inu (AKITA). In both cases, the goals seem to be simply to make risky financial instruments more fun.
That’s one reason Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban gave when he announced that the NBA team’s box office and online fan store would start accepting DOGE for payment. Combined with Elon Musk’s Twitter pronouncements, the hubbub has extended Dogecoin’s visibility on both social and mainstream media.
Coinbase ignored Dogecoin for years but now sees the former joke coin as an asset its advanced Pro users can benefit from. The Coinbase listing adds a layer of credibility to any cryptocurrency for a variety of reasons.
For one, it has a reputation for taking a conservative approach to assessing assets before making them available for trading. Coinbase does not list privacy coin Monero, for example, thanks to regulatory concerns and the risk that it could prompt an SEC investigation.
Coinbase is simply known to be more selective than other popular centralised exchanges (CEXs). OT only lists 62 tokens, versus the 250–300 tokens listed on competitors like Huobi, FTX, and Binance.
Further, Coinbase is the one crypto exchange publicly listed on an American stock exchange, meaning it has the Wall Street seal of approval. Dogecoin’s reputation can only benefit by association.
Over at Coinbase-rival Robinhood, which first listed the meme token back in July of 2018, the company made a DOGE announcement of its own this week, saying that it would begin letting DOGE be transferred off-platform to external wallets. That brings Robinhood in sync with the traditional ethos of crypto trading.
Robinhood, which only includes seven tokens (traditional stock trading is its bread & butter), is on the road to a public listing of its own. The fee-free trading app for retail or individual investors says it wants to “democratise finance.” It claims a user base of circa 20 million, big enough to send the stock price of GameStop soaring earlier in the year and doubled price of AMC before the New York Stock Exchange halted trading.
