Why did Coinbase's pre-listed assets cause controversy? What are the "zero-value coins" that have been there?

As of now, there are 170 tokens available for trading on Coinbase, which is relatively small compared to other mainstream exchanges. However, the reduction in quantity has not improved the quality. Coinbase's list omits many tokens in the top 50 by market value, such as BNB, LUNA, XRP, NEAR, FTT, XMR, etc., but includes many tokens outside the top 500 by market value, such as SHPING, SUKU, GODS, GYEN, PLU, etc.

Coinbase was once known for its strict listing process, so projects that were listed on it often triggered the Coinbase effect. However, after its listing, Coinbase began to list a large number of assets, but the types of assets it selected were rather strange, sparking controversy. The insider trading behavior was also more serious than that of Binance.

According to the latest roadmap, Coinbase will launch a large number of tokens in the second quarter of this year, of which 50 are clearly listed. The scale of this new launch is large, but the quality is as mixed as always, which has caused ridicule from overseas public opinion. This article takes stock of this type of new tokens.

In the table, the first 45 belong to the Ethereum ecosystem, and the last 5 belong to the Solana ecosystem. Among them, only 5 have a market value of more than 100 million US dollars: BUSD, BIT, C98, GUSD and STRK, while there are as many as 15 with a market value of less than 10 million US dollars. Not only that, Coinbase will also list 10 tokens issued before 2020, of which, except BUSD, the rest have long faded out of our sight.

The following is a brief introduction to some relatively niche tokens, sorted by market capitalization.

ELA (Elastos), dedicated to cloud ecosystem infrastructure, saw its price drop by 98% in 2018 and has not risen since then.

MATH (Math), in the wallet field, once raised 20 million US dollars. The price reached its peak in March last year and has now fallen by 90%.

PRQ (PARSIQ), which is committed to building a Web3 data platform to monitor specific on-chain activities, received $3 million in investment led by Solana. The price peaked in April last year and has now fallen 88%.

ALEPH (ALEPH), in the storage field, has raised US$10 million from investors including Stratos Technologies, Zee Prime Capital, NOIA Capital, etc.

NEST (NEST), in the oracle field, saw a 90% price drop in 2020.

KEY (SelfKey), launched in January 2018, reached its peak as soon as it debuted.

DREP (DREP), which is dedicated to building “connectors” and “toolkits” based on blockchain technology, has seen its price drop by 88%.

LOC (lockchain), the track is not clear, and the development path is more similar to the industrial blockchain. It has raised $4.1 million, and the investors are unknown. As an old project launched in 2017, it set a new high last year and performed well.

HOPR (HOPR), dedicated to the construction of privacy and security infrastructure, received $1 million in financing led by Binance and AU21. The price reached its peak in March last year, and has been in a slump since 519.

STC (student coin), dedicated to building a platform, hit bottom in July last year and has never rebounded since then.

SWFTC (SWFTC), a cross-chain bridge project, was a very cutting-edge track in 2018. The price “returned to zero” in August 2018.

ABT (Arcblock) is committed to building infrastructure for interoperability between protocols. The development team is all Chinese. The price fell 95% in 2018 and has never recovered since then. This round of bull market has not fluctuated at all.

TONE (te-food), the track is unclear, similar to industrial blockchain.

JUP (Jupiter) is the earliest issued token among the new tokens. Its price has not fluctuated much since it “returned to zero” in 2019.

PMON (Polychain Monsters) fell below its IPO price as soon as it was launched, and had no success during GameFi Summer.

Most projects with a market value of less than 10 million US dollars are not worth mentioning. Among them, WAMPL is a packaged version of Ampleforth, with an actual market value of nearly 90 million US dollars, which is not within the scope of discussion. Among the remaining 14 tokens, only 3 projects that have received investment from well-known VCs are worth paying attention to. All three belong to the DeFi track, and the issuance time is less than one year, so there may still be potential.

MARSH (Unmarshal) received $2.6 million in funding led by NGC and is committed to building a multi-chain data analysis platform. The price of the coin fell to 519 and then fell into a slump.

DFX (DFX Finance), which received $5 million in financing led by FBG, Polychain and CMS, is committed to building a stablecoin foreign exchange trading platform. The price of the currency has fallen 88% since its peak in November last year.

APT (Apricot), a farm-type DeFi deployed on Solana, received $4.8 million in financing led by NGC, DFG, and CMS. The price of the coin has been falling since its launch in November last year, and has now fallen by 90%.

Even more embarrassing is that insider trading was also discovered. Well-known KOL Cobie said on Twitter that an address was found to have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens that were only potentially listed on the Coinbase asset list about 24 hours ago. Through the Ethereum block browser, it was found that

The address 0x1C84a6d53F8950cd06a4016E5f547a089Dd7B6Fb purchased 113,761.34DFX, 3,174,237.6RADAR, 13,377.98RAC, 45,834.84NDX and 783,309.79KROM before Coinbase listed it (the last purchase time was 5:02 am Beijing time on April 12).

Coinbase explained:

Our goal is to list every compliant asset possible. In our ideal world, Coinbase would simply list every asset that meets the necessary legal and cybersecurity standards while providing our customers with as much information as possible to make informed investment decisions. Listing on our exchange is not considered an endorsement, it simply indicates that the asset meets our listing standards. These standards do not take into account the market capitalization or popularity of the project. If a popular asset is not yet listed, it may be because the asset does not meet our minimum listing standards for legal, compliance, and technical security, we do not have enough information on the asset, or technical integration work is required.