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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

In case you were wondering how this news affected the price of these assets (as of this posting):

    ADA  +10.59%
    BAT  +20.82%
    XLM   +9.42%
    ZEC  +15.18%
    0x   +23.40%

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Thing about announcement like this one is that the correction normally kick in immediately after the surge

See chart https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/zcash https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/0x https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token

When prominent exchange like binance list coin it follows a complete dump.

I did a little bit of research on what happens to coins when they are listed on Binance, which you can see here: https://paste.debian.net/?show=1033668;lines=0

Roughly, coins would spike hard, then correct somewhat, but still generally be up heaps.

I was shocked at how consistently coins would spike upon or days/weeks before being listed on Binance, so when NANO (then Raiblocks) was known to be soon listed, I traded some BTC for it and sure enough it spiked some 30% or so and I made a little bit off it. It was the only time I made money off crypto from an actual legitimate prediction based on evidence. The market seemed to just be scoffing at the idea of caring to be efficient (Weird-sounding finance vocabulary that basically means the price is already in equilibrium due to investors "already knowing" such obvious information, and traded with respect to it such that you still can't tell if the price is going to go up or down)

Wonder if folks at Coinbase did or could have engaged in insider trading? And if they did, does it even fall under SEC jurisdiction or crypto currencies are in the wild West of insider trading?

This was probably the right thing to prevent insider trading. There was evidence of insider trading when Coinbase added BCH, so they might be just completely avoiding the risk of information leaks.

> Wonder if folks at Coinbase did or could have engaged in insider trading

They'd be fools not to. Cryptocurrency trading is not regulated by SEC type entities (yet). Until it is regulated, you can get away with insider trading and even other activities like wash trading, painting the tape, pump and dump etc.

Not true, you can go to jail for that stuff today. The moment there is a derivative (like a futures contract),the CFTC has jurisdiction (and has already sent subpoenas).

> Not true, you can go to jail for that stuff today

Source? Can you point to a single person prosecuted and sent to Jail for Cryptocurrency insider trading?

I don't believe anyone has been caught yet. Coinbase was in trouble after the BCH situation though, both risking an investigation as well as hurting user and investor confidence.

> Until it is regulated, you can get away with insider trading

You would have criminally mis-used Coinbase’s information which properly belongs to its shareholders. There is no statute against insider trading. It’s all a breach of fiduciary duties.

There was plenty of this and speculation thereof when it comes to the BCH launch in December[1].

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-inside...

This is why they are making the announcement now. I would suspect that only a few trusted people would have been involved in making the decision on which tokens to explore. They then made this announcement that they are exploring it at the same time as it was announced internally.

> We are making this announcement internally at Coinbase and to the public at the same time to remain transparent with our customers about support for future assets.

This would hopefully avoid another class action lawsuit like they did with Bitcoin Cash: https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-hit-lawsuit-alleged-inside....

And just for comparison (i'm using the last 24-hr numbers here):

    BTC +0.47%
    ETH +1.14%
    LTC +0.56%

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