Coinbase, a popular cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, is taking steps to make its trading platform work better. To do this, they have decided to stop trading for 80 non-USD pairs that involve different cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, stablecoins like Tether, and regular currencies like the euro. They made this announcement on October 16.
Coinbase believes that by removing these pairs, they can make the overall cryptocurrency market healthier and have more money available for trading. These pairs were removed from the Coinbase exchange, as well as other platforms like Advanced Trade and Coinbase Prime, at 19:30 UTC on October 16.
It’s important to note that these trading pairs weren’t a big part of Coinbase’s total trading volume, so it won’t have a huge impact on their overall business. They want to make sure that people can still trade these assets using US dollars on their platform.
Coinbase has been doing this sort of thing for a while to make their platform work better. They removed 41 pairs in mid-September for the same reason. It’s also worth mentioning that none of the trading pairs they removed included USDC, which is another stablecoin created by Coinbase and Circle.
Coinbase has been trying to improve its platform because its trading volumes, or the amount of cryptocurrency being bought and sold, have been going down this year. Other big cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance have also seen their market share go down this year. According to CCData, Binance’s share of the market fell from 55% in early 2023 to 34% in September 2023.