Coinbase Pro Launches Support for Basic Attention Token (BAT)

Following months of anticipation, Coinbase’s professional investor platform has listed Basic Attention Token (BAT).

US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on Friday that its professional trading platform, Coinbase Pro, had added support for Basic Attention Token (BAT), the ERC-20 token associated with privacy-focused web browser Brave.

Following months of anticipation, Coinbase Pro started accepting BAT deposits as of 20:00 UTC on Friday. Once “sufficient liquidity is established,” the platform will enable BAT trading against USD Coin (USDC), the fiat-collateralized stablecoin co-developed with Circle and recently added to its platforms.

As with other token launches, Coinbase will add BAT in four stages: “transfer-only” (when customers can deposit), “post-only” (customers can post limit orders), “limit-only” (when customers can begin matching orders), and “full trading” (full access to trading services, including limit, market, and stop orders).

“If at any point the BAT/USDC order book does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time, or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules. Any other BAT order books we launch will also go through the same stages,” Coinbase stated.

The exchange added that BAT trading would be available in most jurisdictions except for New York, presumably because of the unclear regulatory climate in the state. The company further noted that it was not yet adding the token to its retail trading platforms, either Coinbase.com or its iOS and Android apps. “We will make a separate announcement when that occurs,” it said.

The Basic Attention project is one of the few initial coin offerings (ICOs) with a working product - the Brave browser. The token can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers, and users on the Ethereum blockchain. It is used to pay for a variety of advertising and attention-based services on the BAT platform.

The Coinbase listing of BAT on Friday prompted an overnight price rise of over 20% to as high as $0.315. The coin’s market capitalization reached $305 million, positioning it as the 30th largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap’s chart. BAT has pared some of the gains in the following 24 hours, slipping 1.68% to $0.287.

The newly added token featured on a list of cryptocurrencies that Coinbase said it was “exploring” back in July, and its addition comes on the heels of the platform’s listing of 0x (ZRX) last month. Other tokens shortlisted for inclusion in Coinbase’s portfolio are Cardano (ADA), Zcash (ZEC), and Stellar Lumens (XLM), with the latter seen as the primary contender to become the next listing.