On Wednesday (5 September 2018), David Farmer, General Manager for Coinbase Pro (which is for “active traders”) announced on Coinbase’s Medium blog that Coinbase Pro will soon be launching new GBP trading pairs for Etherium (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Last month (on 2 August 2018), Coinbase announced that it was going to start rolling out British Pound (GBP) support for UK-based customers of Coinbase (individuals), Coinbase Pro (active traders) and Coinbase Prime (institutions).

Coinbase had managed to get an e-money license for its fiat operations from UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA); added support for the “Faster Payment Scheme”; and become the first crypto trading platform to obtain a UK bank account.

This meant it would be able to offer same day (quite often, near instantaneous) deposits/withdrawals from/to UK bank accounts, which made it easier, faster, and cheaper for UK customers to trade crypto on the Coinbase platform. Currently, all UK customers are able to send GBP to their Coinbase accounts via a domestic bank transfer.

What is being announced today is the launch of the following new GBP trading pairs: ETH–GBP, ETC–GBP, LTC–GBP and BCH–GBP. Note that Coinbase Pro already supports BTC–GBP.

The launch, which starts at 9am BST (i.e. 08:00 UTC) on Friday (7 September 2018), will take place in three stages/phases:

  • “Post-only. In the first stage, customers can post limit orders but there will be no matches (completed orders). Order books will be in post-only mode for a minimum of 10 minutes.”
  • “Limit-only. In the second stage, limit orders will start matching but customers are unable to submit market orders. Order books will be in limit-only mode for a minimum of 10 minutes.”
  • “Full trading. In the final stage, full trading services will be available, including limit, market, and stop orders.”

At the time of writing, according to data from CryptoCompare, ETH is trading at $243.02 (down 14.27%), BCH is trading at $536.42 (down 14.18%), LTC is trading at $59.82 (down 12.92%), and ETC is trading at $12.22 (down 12.40%).

Featured Interface Image Courtesy of Coinbase