This post was most recently updated on December 5th, 2018

Three new cryptocurrencies have been listed recently on Coinbase, 0x, BAT and ZEC. All resulted in pumps and dumps as usually happens and there is no surprise to that. But it is important to point to a new thing tied to this new listing on Coinbase and it is that new listings are being paired only by USDC and this thing may raise many questions.

Stablecoins are trying to overcome Bitcoin’s dominance

USDC or USD coin is a dollar-pegged ERC20 token created from Circle and Coinbase. It has been intended to compete with Tether which has been entangled in a lot of discussions as of late. As indicated by the ad spot on the site:

“CENTRE stablecoins are issued by regulated and licensed financial institutions that maintain full reserves of the equivalent fiat currency. Issuers are required to regularly report USD reserve holdings, and that information will be made available upon request.”

According to Coinmarketcap USDC volume is at present $12 million with a market cap of $178 million, so still far off USDT. Coinbase Pro is presently utilizing USDC to encourage trading on its exchange for US users. Those in Europe and the UK on ordinary Coinbase will have Euros and GBP. The surprising thing presently is that the most recent listings of cryptocurrencies have been made accessible only in USDC and not Bitcoin or fiat as has generally been the situation.

A question that would rise is: Why would I buy or sell into USDC instead of USD on an exchange that accepts USD?!!!

BAT still only listed against USDC a month ago and recently ZEC also has been added and it is also only tradable against USDC

A reason why they are doing this might be that they are trying to push Tether (USDT) out of the game. The actual, high volume of USDT is preventing the adoption of other stablecoins, so Coinbase maybe is artificially pumping the USDC volume which is actually at $12 million daily, but still far from Tether volume which is at the $3.4 billion daily.

Of course, another reason doing this is profit because the fees on buying USDC are very high. So first you deposit USD on Coinbase, then you have to convert it to USDC for a high fee and only then will you be able to buy the alt. For example, if you deposit $700 USD on Coinbase you get 673 USDC.

Some users pointed to this theory on twitter

As @hasufl correctly points out: the latest 2 adds on @coinbase have been paired with $USDC.

We all know that Coinbase has been trying to take control of Bitcoin in the past (Segwit2X, BitcoinXT, BU,…) and after that didn’t work have been pushing alts.https://t.co/SMHZedlaTO — WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) December 1, 2018

We will see in the future if this changes and new coins with have other pairs other than USDC, but till now it appears to be the way Coinbase will operate with new listings.

What do you think about the new listing strategy Coinbase is adopting? Feel free to post your opinion in the comments below.