According to Coinbase Wallet’s official Twitter account, the cryptocurrency exchange of the same name will disable support for Ripple’s native token, XRP, and some other coins early next year. The reason for this is low activity on the protocol around these assets.
Coinbase Wallet issued an effective deadline of Dec. 5 after which it said it will no longer support the altcoins.
As part of the announcement, Coinbase however, also said that the decision “does not mean that your assets will be lost.” The company clarified that any “unsupported assets you have will still be tied to your address(es) and also accessible through your Wallet recovery phrase.”
1/3: After careful evaluation, we will be removing support for several networks with low activity on Coinbase Wallet starting in January 2023—including BCH, ETC, XLM & XRP. These routine evaluations allow us to continue investing in new features that make web3 more accessible.
— Coinbase Wallet 🛡️ (@CoinbaseWallet) November 29, 2022
The announcement that XRP, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum Classic (ETC) — both forked versions of Bitcoin and Ethereum — and Stellar (XLM) will no longer be supported by the platform has created quite a stir, particularly among the XRP community. Some view it as reminiscent of Coinbase’s own delisting of XRP a few years back, though they went ahead with it then due to outside regulatory pressure (so as to avoid any legal repercussions).
While the ‘low usage’ argument for the Coinbase Wallet team’s decision seems a valid one, it is still worth mentioning that the $20 billion market cap XRP is one of the largest cryptocurrencies and has an average daily volume of nearly $1 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Coinbase Wallet’s recent discontinuation of XRP support appears to be timed oddly, given that Ripple is nearing the end of its case with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Price Action
Despite the announcement, XRP is up more than 2% intraday to $0.402. The altcoin, which gained 7% in the past week, is down 11% in the last 30 days due to FTX’s implosion continuing to negatively impact the cyrpto markets.
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