CoinMetrics Finds the ‘Coinbase Effect’ is Actually Pretty Lame

The fabled ‘Coinbase Effect’ has a much more limited impact on the price of newly listed coins than is popularly believed, according to CoinMetrics.

The crypto data analysis firm has just published a report examining the impact that listing on the leading U.S.-based crypto exchange has on the price of a given crypto asset.

The report concludes the effect is fairly muted — with new Coinbase markets typically posting average and median price performances between -1% and +14% against USD, Bitcoin (BTC), and Ether (ETH) from 10 days before until ten days after a listing’s announcement.

CoinMetrics also examined the price impact of Coinbase announcements regarding markets under consideration for listing, finding that said events were unable to produce significant deviations in market activity beyond prevailing crypto asset meta-trends.

Availability error

The analysis described that outsize returns in excess of 50% generated by Tezos (XTZ), Chainlink (LINK), and OmiseGo (OMG) as “outliers”.

Six of the 16 crypto assets listed by the exchange and examined in the report produced a negative price performance 10 days after listing on the exchange, while three of the markets posted gains of less than 5%.

CoinMetrics found the median — or most common —  price performance of a Coinbase Pro market 10 days after launch to be a 4% gain. 

‘Exploration’ announcements have little impact on price

The report also examined the impact of Coinbase announcements regarding prospective listings that are under consideration, finding that the shorter-term impacts of the “exploration” announcements “tend to be temporarily skewed toward the broader market trend at the time.”

Markets under consideration during the bear market of late-2018 were found to have generally trended downwards, while crypto assets explored during the “flat, choppy market in summer 2019” saw inconsistent moves both the up-side and down-side, and coins considered during Q2 2020’s “melt-up” market were found to have produced slight gains on average.

“With the industry consensus being that Coinbase is the largest ‘retail’ onramp, the impact of a Coinbase listing should hold some significance on assets that might make the cut. However, there is another big factor that influences the impact of the listing: market conditions,” the report concluded.

According to a June 10 blog post from Coinbase, the exchange was exploring support for 18 new assets including Aragon (ANT), Arweave (AR), Bancor (BNT), Horizen (ZEN), Livepeer (LPT), NuCypher (NKMS), Origin Protocol (OGN), Ren (REN), Render Network (RNDR), Siacoin (SC), SKALE Network, Synthetix (SNX), and VeChain (VET).