Coinbase CEO Proposes New Token Listing Approach

Centralized platforms must revamp their listing process as 1 million coins are created each week, making it “impractical” to evaluate each individually, stated Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

We need to rethink our listing process at @coinbase given there are ~1m tokens a week being created now, and growing. High quality problem to have, but evaluating each one by one is no longer feasible. And regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is…

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) January 26, 2025

According to him, this is a complex issue, but regulators must understand that exchanges cannot and see no point in processing a vast number of applications weekly.

As an alternative, Armstrong suggested shifting from a “whitelist” to a “blacklist” of cryptocurrencies, and utilizing customer feedback and automated on-chain data scanning. This would help users independently filter assets.

“[…] we will continue to integrate our own DEX support at a deeper level. Customers shouldn’t need to know or care whether trading occurs on a decentralized or centralized exchange,” added the Coinbase CEO.

Kaspa miner known as Luke noted that the proposal is excellent, but the exchange itself should amend its project registration forms.

Great point, Brian—thousands of new tokens each week is a massive challenge. But if Coinbase wants to champion high quality truly decentralised projects, maybe step one is tweaking that century-old form of yours asking for ‘executives’ and ‘incorporation details.’

Not every… pic.twitter.com/S0wydFU2hR

— Luke ? (@elldeeone) January 26, 2025

He observed that the form includes mandatory fields for “executives” and “incorporation details.” Truly decentralized projects often cannot provide such data, Luke noted.

“Not every open-source project launched honestly has a conference room and a zip code. After all, change begins at home,” he emphasized.

Back in November 2024, Tron founder Justin Sun revealed that Coinbase requested 500 million XRP and a $250 million Bitcoin deposit for listing.