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BONK, the dog coin currently at the heart of the Solana space’s hopes and dreams, holds the record for 2023’s biggest Coinbase pump.
Coinbase listings are a big deal for crypto projects. More users implies more volume, and more volume should mean higher prices, some might say.
But it seems the most bullish thing about making it to Coinbase isn’t the actual listing — but the lead up.
Take BONK. Mid-way through its pearl-clutching 18,000% pump, Coinbase posted on X to say it had added BONK to its listing roadmap.
Markets were taking a breather on BONK at the time. What was a $20 million community coin at the end of October had ballooned to a near-$900 million powerhouse by mid-December, and it was now looking at a 40% correction.
Coinbase listings generally happen in three stages: roadmap, confirmation of support and then fully-fledged trade.
- BONK, on other crypto exchanges, tanked up to 27% about five hours after the roadmap announcement, during which time bitcoin remained flat.
- Nearly 18 hours later, Coinbase confirmed US dollar markets for BONK would open on the following day, at midday in New York.
- BONK rallied up to 50% in the meantime and more than doubled in the 18 hours after it hit Coinbase.
Two days after its listing, last Friday, BONK was, for a moment, worth more than $2 billion. It has since retraced by two-fifths.
Despite its current pullback, BONK is still up nearly double since Coinbase confirmed its listing last Wednesday.
All Coinbase listings this year have pre-pumped
BONK may seem like an outlier, but it’s not alone.
Coinbase has listed 15 other cryptocurrencies this year, and all went up in the time period between Coinbase confirming their listings and the actual listing taking place – save one, the Ripple-centric smart contract network, flare (FLR), which ended up even.
Bitcoin, which generally leads the market, rose more than 2% alongside those cryptocurrencies on only two occasions. This indicates little correlation between the price of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies listed on Coinbase, at least in the short term.
(Liquid staking tokens, or tokens which already had trading history elsewhere weren’t included, as the effect Coinbase would’ve had on their prices would’ve been far less clear.)
BONK’s pre-list pump was beaten by another obscure cryptocurrency, DIMO, a token used to pay drivers for sharing their data. Coinbase confirmed its listing on April 17 and two hours later, DIMO had more than doubled.
The data suggests Coinbase’s X posts about new listings are indeed correlated with higher prices. The same can’t really be said for the actual listings.
Nine of the 16 cryptocurrencies analyzed ended the week after their Coinbase listings in the red, ranging from 36% down in the case of algorithmic stablecoin Sperax to the minus 5% recorded by osmosis (OSMO), the token for the Cosmos decentralized exchange token of the same name.
VOXIES, the crypto tied to the NFT universe, spiked up to 26% one hour after Coinbase confirmed its listing in February. It sank by nearly a third in the four days following.
More than half of Coinbase listings tank in their first week
It’s too early to tell how BONK will do at the close of its first week on Coinbase, as it’s only been trading on that venue for four days.
Still, BONK’s 128% rally in the 14 hours after its Coinbase listing holds the record for the year so far — more than double DIMO’s and VeChain’s second cryptocurrency, VeThor.
Whatever effect Coinbase listings have in immediate prices, they apparently diminish over a longer period. About half have gone down in the months since their listings, many by more than 50%.
Data availability asset celestia (TIA) and ad-hoc telecoms token helium (HNT) have exploded by up to 400% since their debuts. HNT joined Coinbase in July while TIA made it on Nov. 1.
Of course, these digital assets were added to Coinbase when crypto markets were relatively hot. Announcements of listings in proper bear markets may not have the same effect.