Little-Known Altcoin Surges 143% As Coinbase Announces Surprise Listing

A new altcoin attempting to reward participants for contributions to the Ethereum network is posting gains after a listing from the largest US-based crypto exchange.

In an announcement, Coinbase says Optimism (OP) will start trading on Coinbase Pro paired with Tether (USDT) once appropriate liquidity conditions are met.

According to Coinbase, OP will be designated as “experimental,” meaning it may have higher volatility and lower trading volume when compared to other assets in Coinbase’s lineup.

Optimism is a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum (ETH). Its native token OP is used for governance and allocation of network resources.

OP launched on May 31st. Its was priced at $0.79 just before the announcement from Coinbase, which quickly brought its value soaring 143% to a high of $1.92, according to historical data from CoinMarketCap.

At time of writing, Optimism has given up some of those gains and is currently trading at $1.25.

In another post, Coinbase says it’s also adding Optimism to its roster of 200+ assets that are part of the Coinbase Custody cold storage trust.

Coinbase Custody is a custodial service for institutional investors with big money. It’s chartered in New York State and designed to give clients a highly secure way to store large amounts of crypto.

Competing crypto exchange Binance initially said it planned to open OP for trading on June 1st paired with Bitcoin (BTC), Binance USD (BUSD) and Tether (USDT), but then later postponed the offering “due to delays in deposits caused by high on-chain transaction volume.”

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