Get Into Cryptocurrency Trading Today
In May 2018, San Francisco-based digital currency business Coinbase launched a global cryptocurrency trading exchange called Coinbase Pro.
Only two years later and, looking at CoinMarketCap’s digital asset exchange rankings, Coinbase Pro resides second place (in terms of ‘Web Traffic Factor’, a measure of popularity based on web traffic activity).
Read on to find out just how this seemingly new exchange achieved such a high ranking on CoinMarketCap in such a short amount of time? What is the difference between Coinbase and Coinbase Pro? And what the benefits of using Coinbase Pro are compared to other platforms?
What is Coinbase Pro?
In actuality ‘Coinbase Pro’ is just a rebranding of a pre-existing platform called ‘Global Digital Asset Exchange’ (GDAX) and operates a continuous first-come, first-serve order book. Interestingly, this is the second name change which the platform has received. In 2016, what is currently known as ‘Coinbase Pro’ changed its name to ‘GDAX’ from it’s original title: ‘Coinbase Exchange’.
The recent rebranding was done in an attempt to integrate the product into the larger brand identity of Coinbase, and so effectively: the branding has come full circle.
Coinbase originally created the exchange platform in 2015 to specifically target and cater to professional retail and institutional investors, as a compliment to its original product which is “for everyone”.
Coinbase Pro describes itself “the most trusted platform for trading cryptocurrency” and represents something of an upgraded version of Coinbase’s regular services. It is currently available to customers who reside in the United States, United Kingdom, and selected parts of Europe.
About Coinbase
San Francisco-based Coinbase was founded in 2012 as a digital currency wallet and trading platform. In fact Coinbase was the first licensed U.S. bitcoin exchange.
The ‘vanilla’ suite of Coinbase products includes the Coinbase Wallet, USD Coin / USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar and owned / operated by Coinbase), and Earn (an educational resource which offers courses, with some offering rewards from sponsoring token issuers).
Coinbase partnerships include Visa, a relationship which began back in February 2019 and marked the first “pure-play” cryptocurrency organisation to become one of Visa’s ‘Principal Members’. In addition, the digital assets business
Why Use Coinbase Pro?
Coinbase Pro supports 28 cryptocurrencies which you can buy and sell, in addition to a selection of fiat currency options. These tokens include: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC).
Beyond being second place behind Binance on CoinMarketCap’s ‘Web Traffic Factor ranking, Coinbase Pro is also ranked third place (behind Bibox and Bitfinex) among exchanges by ‘Avg Liquidity’ (the result of averaging the ‘liquidity scores’ of a cryptocurrency exchange’s “most liquid” market pairs).
It offers an “industry leading API”, promising users easy access to real-time market data, whilst the other enables the programming of custom trading bots; in addition to “full insurance” (all digital assets stored on Coinbase Pro come with “up to $250,000” coverage per customer via FDIC insurance).
Users with a Coinbase Pro account can enjoy lower trading fees for high volume trading compared to those on the regular Coinbase platform, through a web browser based interface, as well as a mobile app for Android devices.