On Tuesday (16 October 2018), less than one week after crypto exchange Coinbase listed cryptocurrency 0x Protocol (ZRX) on “Coinbase Pro”, it announced that it had made ZRX also available on “Coinbase Consumer” and on its mobile apps.
0x’s white paper describes it as “a protocol that facilitates low friction peer-to-peer exchange of ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.” One interesting fact about 0x is that it forms the foundation of Paradex, the decentralized exchange that Coinbase acquired on 24 May 2018, and which is being integrated into Coinbase Pro.
Here is how Linda Xie, co-founder and managing director of Scalar Capital, describes the purpose of the 0x Protocol:
“0x was co-founded by Will Warren and Amir Bandeali in October 2016. They envision a world in which every asset can be represented as a token on the Ethereum blockchain including fiat currencies, stocks, gold and digital game items. This tokenization will lead to thousands of tokens that need a method of trustless exchange. Decentralized exchanges have been a major step forward but there are still the remaining inefficiencies and lack of operability between decentralized exchanges. 0x aims to create a standard protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that allows any Ethereum token to be traded and for anyone to operate a decentralized exchange. These parties building on top of 0x are referred to as Relayers as they host off blockchain order books and can charge fees for their services.”
And this is how she describes the ZRX token:
“0x has its own Ethereum token, ZRX, which is used to pay trading fees to Relayers for their services. However, the main purpose for ZRX is decentralized governance over 0x protocol’s upgrade system, meaning owning ZRX gives you a say proportional to your holdings in how the protocol should be improved over time. “
If you believe in the idea of “Tokenization of Everything”, which is something that Goldman-backed FinTech startup Circle frequently talks about, then you can see how important 0x could be in future, and why Coinbase might have decided to make ZRX the first ERC-20 token to offer on its trading platforms.
Anyway, here is how Coinbase announced the news on Twitter:
ZRX is now live at https://t.co/bCG11KveHS and in the Coinbase iOS and Android apps. Coinbase customers can log in now to buy, sell, send, receive, or store ZRX. https://t.co/kzDisSZrFu
— Coinbase (@coinbase) October 16, 2018
Coinbase Consumer is the trading platform hosted at Coinbase.com, and it is used by most of Coinbase’s millions of users; in contrast, Coinbase Pro is hosted at Pro.Coinbase.com, and it is intended for use by “professional” (or very experienced) investors.
Coinbase’s blog post says that it is now possible to trade ZRX on Coinbase.com and on Coinbase’s mobile apps. As you can see in the following screenshot, Coinbase.com now allows trading of BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, ETC, and ZRX:
However, it is worth noting that “ZRX will be available for customers in most jurisdictions, but will not initially be available for residents of the United Kingdom or the state of New York.”
This latest news led to another surge in the price of ZRX tokens. According to CryptoCompare data, ZRX is currently trading at $0.9802, up 33.8% in the past 24-hour period.
Here is the one-day price chart for ZRX:
Will Warren, co-founder and CEO at 0x, used the following tweet to try to temper investors’ expectations:
This is probably a good time to remind everyone that 0x is a highly experimental technology that is built on top of another piece of highly experimental technology.
— Will Warren (@willwarren89) October 17, 2018
Featured Image Courtesy of ZeroEx
