Coinbase adds support for Balancer (BAL) and Ren (REN)

Coinbase today announced the addition of Ethereum-based Balancer (BAL) and Ren (REN) to their website and Android and iOS apps. This will allow Coinbase customers to buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store BAL and REN.

While BAL and REN went fully live, Coinbase tweeted,

With the exception of New York State, BAL will be available to all the Coinbase users. REN is made available in all Coinbase-supported regions except New York State and the UK.

Balancer (BAL) and Ren (REN)

BAL and REN are Ethereum tokens that power Balancer Protocol and Ren’s Open Protocol, respectively.

The Balancer protocol is “an automated market maker that lets anyone create or add liquidity to trading pools while earning customizable trading fees.” Ren’s Open protocol allows transfering cryptos between blockchain and aims to bring assets like Bitcoin to blockchains including Ethereum, allowing them to participate in Ethereum’s decentralized finance ecosystem.

On The Price Front

According to CoinMarketCap data, at press time, REN was trading at $0.23 with a 9.5% increase in the one hour time frame. Its market cap, at the time of writing, is $206,109,529. However, BAL saw only 2.8% 1-hour hike post the announcement. BAL was trading at $13.82 with a market cap of $95,981,719.

Coinbase competing with Uniswap?

With Uniswap taking the lead in the Defi space, others have to catch-up to not be left behind. Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly Capital and Huobi, today, announced an investment of $500,000 in a decentralized exchange called CoFiX.

The new DEX to be launched in two days is said to be a Uniswap competitor that had left behind Coinbase Pro in terms of trading volume. CoFIX’s price feeds taken from its decentralized price oracle called NEST and its risk-assessment model.