San Francisco-based bitcoin exchange Coinbase Exchange has announced that it will now operate under a new brand GDAX (Global Digital Asset Exchange). GDAX will facilitate trading of BTC/USD, BTC/CAD, BTC/EUR, BTC/GBP, ETH/BTC, and ETH/USD.
The reason for renaming Coinbase Exchange to GDAX while keeping the Coinbase wallet platform intact is to better highlight the difference between these two products. Founded in 2012, the bitcoin wallet company boasts of 3,800,000 users, 5,700,000 wallets, 43,000 merchants, and 8,000 developer apps. The Coinbase Exchange, on the other hand, has enabled thousands of professionals to trade massive amounts of bitcoin. From now on, GDAX will serve the purpose of the exchange.
Trading on GDAX is currently supported in select states of US, Canada, Europe, and United Kingdom. In US, trading is not supported in Wyoming, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Connecticut. Ethereum support is presently not available to traders of New York, however, a resolution of this issue is being worked out.
A list of supported European nations has been provided in the infographic below.
Fees
With Ethereum trading having been enabled, the fee structure must be known beforehand. But let us first understand two terms used by Coinbase – Maker and Taker.
If you place an order that is immediately executed at your price, then you are considered a Taker and will pay a fee between 0.10% and 0.25% for BTC books and 0.10%-0.30% for ETH books.
If you place an order that takes time to get executed, then you are the Maker and are not required to pay any fees.
Coinbase believes that a trader consistently using its platform to trade digital assets shouldn’t pay the same fee as the infrequent trader, and hence, has coupled its fees with the trading volume, albeit on an inverse basis. That is, the more you trade, the less fee you pay.
