Last week, Coinbase came out with a statement denying that it plans to offer any new coins to its trading service in the near future, leading the cryptocurrency market to question rumors from December about a possible Ripple partnership.
Immediately afterwards, we saw the price of XRP (Ripple’s crypto coin) drop by almost one third of its all-time-high. At the time of this article’s release, it is trading at approximately $2.42 on CoinMarketCap.
So where does that leave XRP hodl’ers?
Well, let’s try to think critically about what Coinbase is saying.
Is Ripple simply *not* coming to Coinbase, or is Coinbase simply saying “not now”?
Coinbase’s infrastructure was not built to anticipate the kind of demand that exploded onto the scene in Q4 2017.
In fact, they came out with a statement mid-December about needing to expand their offices by 640% throughout 2017 in order to keep up.
And when the moment was right, they added a BitCoin Cash pair to help with liquidity, reel back BitCoin’s initial bull-run and lead comfortably into the necessary pre-Christmas correction.
Did Coinbase want you to know that BCH was coming to their platform?
Of course they didn’t. The market would have dumped everything and their mother to pick up loads of cheap BCH ahead of the launch.
It’s in Coinbase’s best interest to pull the publicity strings and control the traffic.
Look at what just happened in the US: the Holiday rush caused the most winners in this market’s history to share (true) stories about multiplying their USD investment, causing a whole new generation of investors to follow suit and enter the market in January on an exponential incline.
These investors are also likely hearing about XRP from their friends, seeing that it only trades for $1–4, and understand at some level that a Coinbase pairing will result in logarithmically advantageous returns similar to what we saw with Ethereum, BitCoin Cash and Litecoin.
The crux of this being that Coinbase is currently the market’s “front page” for US citizens as one of the very few exchanges where USD can be turned into BTC or ETH and vice versa. Most new US investors use it to enter the market or liquidate their holdings.
As a result, Coinbase has spent the better part of the week flooded with buy orders by new investors looking to send their BTC, LTC or ETH to another exchange, such as Binance or Bittrex, to trade for XRP and similar altcoins, causing massive cashflow shortages and halted service.
Why does this matter? Simple. If you buy BTC on Coinbase and your order hasn’t been confirmed on BitCoin’s blockchain, your USD is floating in limbo indefinitely, until the transaction has been confirmed.
No cancels, no refunds.
This is VERY bad for Coinbase’s PR. This is the reason that we need periodical corrections (where everybody is selling or holding, like what we saw before Christmas). This is the reason that Coinbase threw the market into a controlled tailspin with their BCH pair. This is why they want to keep the hype “fire” suppressed.
Not to mention, this phenomenon has also caused Binance, Bittrex and other exchanges with XRP pairs to stop allowing the creation of new accounts by US citizens.
So. All things in consideration, that leaves the market realizing extreme artificial inflation in XRP’s price, locked in by investors who are leaping from their positions on -1% to -35% margins because they feel their investment has nowhere else to go.
This is a major win for Coinbase. They’ve squashed the cumbersome rumor, AND they’re getting people to move BTC/ETH back onto their exchange to sell which keeps new orders processing correctly.
Now, let me explain to you why jumping ship helps longer-term XRP holders and hurts you.
First, you’re lowering the price and helping us buy more while you lock in your own capital losses.
Second, the difference between $1 XRP and $3.84 XRP is negligible.
Why?
XRP fosters more utility and support than many other projects in its price range.
It already has partnerships with a handful of banks across the globe. It’s building a bridge between the centralized world and the decentralized world (yes, this goes against the point of crypto, but there’s absurd amounts of money to be made there if you think about it from an institutional perspective).
To clarify, banks that partner with Ripple are using a proprietary blockchain called RippleNet which is unrelated to XRP. If, however, your local bank begins to trade XRP, your local businesses will likely begin to accept XRP as well.
Why would banks begin trading XRP if they are being issued an unrelated blockchain?
Easy. Ripple pulls the strings. They build and operate the software. They break new ground for their clients.
They create a need. They get to own their market share, which happens to be the banks that they partner with.
Banks start trading XRP; local businesses willingly begin carrying and accepting it as payment.
Think about the implications of that.
XRP could be the first coin widely traded with liquidity similar to USD. Money on a blockchain. The ability to store it digitally, or send it to an exchange to trade for anything else. You’d own your own money, and be able to access it with the snap of a finger.
Your bank becomes your entry point to XRP, but anything you do with the coins after that is up to you.
Not to mention, Ripple recently hired an ex Facebook communications manager (Tom Channick) to lock in new sponsors and prepare the platform for mass marketization. Strategically speaking, why would somebody as high-profile as Tom accept Ripple’s offer if he doesn’t see massive potential value?
Finally, there’s a reason that a Coinbase pairing was leaked- because they are preparing to add one. It’s an eventual logical step for them.
But imagine what impact the pairing would have in this current market.
Investors would rush to unload their BTC/ETH/LTC/BCH and buy all of the cheap XRP in one swift bull-rally. The servers would collapse. The blockchains would jam for days. The market would tailspin uncontrollably.
Coinbase would cease to exist.
Ripple is coming. It’s just coming when Coinbase and the rest of the market can handle it.
**DISCLAIMER: This article is not meant to act as financial advice. The opinions expressed here are speculation. Please do your own research before choosing to invest your money. With cryptocurrency being as volatile as it is, only invest what you can afford to lose. I currently own some XRP, XLM, ADA and POE.