Financial Insights That Matter
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said 1 million new tokens are created weekly.
- He said regulators need to know that it’s not “feasible” to evaluate each one for listing.
- Armstrong suggested a shift to a “block list” for crypto listings to streamline the process.
The CEO of Coinbase says that a million new crypto coins are created every week, and it’s becoming hard to evaluate them all.
Coinbase is a popular cryptocurrency trading platform that has allowed users to trade cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and dogecoin since 2012. The company has seen enormous growth since going public in 2022 and is now worth $74 billion.
Coinbase, like all cryptocurrency exchanges, uses an application process for new currency listings that evaluates the coin based on the company’s own digital-asset framework.
“High-quality problem to have, but evaluating each one by one is no longer feasible,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a post on X on Sunday. “And regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is totally infeasible at this point as well (they can’t do 1m a week).”
Coinbase and other leading crypto companies have urged the federal government to clarify cryptocurrency regulations to ensure they can stay compliant.
The industry is optimistic, however, with the arrival of President Donald Trump, who has made promoting crypto a central part of his agenda. Trump even launched his own meme coin shortly before his inauguration. His wife, Melania Trump, quickly followed suit.
The number of circulating meme coins has risen in recent years. These are cryptocurrencies that are sometimes based on an internet meme or the result of a joke but are always designed to go viral in the hope of increasing their value.
Anyone can create a meme coin online. If it does go viral, it could earn the creator, who’s often the largest investor, a windfall. Influencers have caught on and now often leverage their followings to capitalize.
Haliey Welch, known to most online as the “Hawk Tuah Girl,” made headlines in December after she launched her own meme coin, $hawk. The coin’s total market value shot up to almost $500 million before it collapsed after just hours. Welch told Fortune at the time that the coin wasn’t meant to be a “cash grab.” In a post on X, Welch said her team didn’t sell any coins.
Armstrong said it was time to “rethink” the listing process at Coinbase, advocating for regulation of the crypto listing process to move from an “add list” to a “block list” that utilizes customer reviews and automated scans of blockchain data to help with the process.
According to the company’s website, Coinbase’s current listing procedure is a six-step process that requires a review request, an initial review, an additional “due diligence” analysis, and a notice to complete the analysis, listing, and post-listing support.
Justin Sun, the former representative for Grenada at the World Trade Organization and founder of the cryptocurrency Tron, said in a post on X that his cryptocurrency had been under review at Coinbase for seven years. Sun said that tron was one of the world’s top 10 cryptocurrencies and had performed well in other markets but never passed through the Coinbase listing process.
“Will Coinbase ultimately list TRX after it debuts on the NYSE and Nasdaq, or will it never list it at all?” Sun wrote. “This has nothing to do with TRX itself but rather reflects Coinbase’s loss of the most basic fairness and industry judgment when it comes to new listings.”