On Thursday (11 October 2018), crypto exchange Coinbase confirmed via a blog post that it is listing 0x Protocol (ZRX), and that it is now “accepting deposits for ZRX on Coinbase Pro.” The news caused the price of ZRX to surge more than 11%.

Here is the one-day price chart (supplied by CryptoCompare) for ZRX

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.

The blog post by David Farmer, the General Manager of Coinbase Pro, said that from 10am PT (i.e. 17:00 UTC) on Thursday, October 11th, deposits for ZRX on Coinbase Pro are being accepted. Trading won’t be enabled for at least 12 hours from this time, and only after “sufficient liquidity is established.” The trading pairs on offer in most jurisdictions are ZRX/USD, ZRX/EUR ,and ZRX/BTC. However, please note that ZRX trading will not initially be available to New York state residents. Also, in accordance with usual Coinbase practice, ZRX is currently only available for trading on Coinbase Pro, which is designed for professional (or experienced) traders, and not on “Coinbase Consumer” (i.e. Coinbase.com) or via Coinbase’s mobile apps.

Just like when Ether Classic (ETC) was added to Coinbase Pro in August, ZRX is going to have a four-step staged launch. Each of these stages will be followed independently “for each new order book” (ZRX/USD, ZRX/EUR, and ZRX/BTC). If at any point, one of these new order books fails to meet Coinbase’s standards “for a healthy and orderly market”, they may “keep the book in one state for a longer period of time, or suspend trading.”

The four stages are:

“Transfer-only. Starting at 10am PT on Thursday October 11, customers will be able to transfer ZRX into their Coinbase Pro account. Customers will not yet be able to place orders, and no orders will be filled on these order books. Order books will be in transfer-only mode for at least 12 hours.”

“Post-only. In the second stage, customers can post limit orders but there will be no matches (completed orders). Order books will be in post-only mode for a minimum of one (1) minute. This market state may be kept short or extended to increase market health during launch.”

“Limit-only. In the third stage, limit orders will start matching but customers will be unable to submit market orders. Order books will be in limit-only mode for a minimum of 10 minutes.”

“Full trading. In the final stage, full trading services will be available, including limit, market, and stop orders.”

At press time, according to data from CryptoCompare, ZRX is trading at $0.8152, up 7.26% in the past 24-hour period.

The most interesting and unusual thing about this listing is that many people in the crypto community (at least, those on Reddit and Twitter) had a very suspicion as early as 7 October 2018 that Coinbase was soon going to list ZRX. Take a look at this tweet from October 7th:

Guys, this $ZRX thing on @coinbase is real. Go to dashboard > tools > tax center > gain/loss calculator and run it. Then see this: pic.twitter.com/izsWDetyND — Crypto Xfitter (@CryptoXfitter) October 7, 2018

Featured Image Courtesy of Coinbase