Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase expressed his frustrations with the current listing process and suggested potential improvements that may mitigate the torrent of daily listing requests Coinbase receives.
Coinbase Overwhelmed By a ‘Million Tokens a Week,’ CEO Says
This article was published more than a year ago. Some information may no longer be current.
WRITTEN BY
SHARE
Coinbase Might Overhaul Its Listing Process
U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is being inundated with a million token listing requests a week, according to a post on Saturday by its CEO Brian Armstrong.
To put that into perspective, the platform currently has a mere 273 assets listed and has an entire department – the Digital Asset Listing Group (DALG) – that sifts through the hoard of requests to find a select few that meet the exchange’s stringent criteria.
But in the middle of an unprecedented bull market that has for the first time coincided with a crypto-friendly administration and the emergence of A.I. agents like Clanker that can mint a seemingly endless array of memecoins, the surge in tokens has increased exponentially and Armstrong says Coinbase is feeling the crunch.
“We need to rethink our listing process at Coinbase,” Armstrong said. “Evaluating each one-by-one is no longer feasible.”
The exchange has a relatively transparent listing process that centers around an in-depth due diligence review where the DALG considers factors such as “technology, use case, market demand, and regulatory compliance,” according to Coinbase’s website.
Regulators must also review the assets listed on the exchange to ensure no securities laws are violated, which means regulators are also being overwhelmed by the deluge of token requests.
“Regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is totally infeasible at this point as well,” Armstrong explained. “It needs to move from an ‘allow list’ to a ‘block list.’”
Armstrong also suggested using customer reviews and performing automated scans of on-chain data to help “sift through” the cornucopia of assets. While a crypto-friendly regulatory shift is in progress, it’s unclear if regulators such as the SEC will be onboard with Armstrong’s recommendations.
