Bitfinex Gives Tether Competition, Adds Four of Market’s Top Stablecoins

Cryptocurrency exchanges Bitfinex and Ethfinex now support trading for all six of the market’s major stablecoins. Adding to its support for MakerDao’s Dai and Tether’s USDT, the sister platforms recently listed USD Coin (USDC), TrueUSD (TUSD), Paxos Standard Token (PAX) and Gemini USD (GUSD). All stablecoins available on the exchanges will be traded against the U.S. dollar.

Launched in 2018, Ethfinex is Bitfinex’s ERC-20 exchange arm. Built for trading Ethereum tokens, the exchange is centralized at the moment, but the team plans to transform it into a decentralized exchange in the future.

Bitfinex made the announcement in a December 4, 2018, blog post stating:

“From today, customers of Bitfinex and Ethfinex will be able to trade all six major stablecoins on both exchanges. At Bitfinex and Ethfinex, we’re dedicated to providing a high quality, unbiased meeting place for every ecosystem and customer,” the post reads.

Bitfinex’s promise to remain “unbiased” is notable given the exchange’s intrinsic ties to Tether. Both Bitfinex and Tether share a CEO, and the interoperations between both entities, which critics have regarded as opaque, have called Tether’s credibility into question, paving the way for the competing projects that Bitfinex has just listed.

One of the biggest issues stemming from the cryptocurrency space is volatility. Many digital assets are known for experiencing wild price swings that can cause traders to incur unexpected and swift losses.

Stablecoins are considered to be a viable solution to this volatility. These currencies are typically tied to varying forms of fiat, such as USD, the euro or the yen, lessening the chances of price swings and giving investors more security with their trades. Others, like Dai, are collateralized using cryptocurrencies, namely ether.

Bitfinex and Ethfinex were the first digital currency exchanges to introduce their customers to the Dai, an Ethereum-based stablecoin. The addition of the four new coins follows Bitfinex rolling out USD and euro fiat pairs for Tether in November of this year.  

Tether, the oldest and most popular of the stablecoins the two exchanges offer, was launched in 2014. Allegedly tied to USD, it was the only stablecoin available to crypto traders until this year, when the market saw the addition of several new stablecoins that brought Tether’s competition to higher ground.

At press time, both deposits and withdrawals for these six coins are reserved only for verified traders across both platforms, though trading itself remains unaffected by a customer’s verification status.

Stablecoins have seen increased exchange and platform adoption in the tail end of 2018. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance, for example, recently added Paxos as a base currency to its trading platform, and the exchange also announced support for USDC in mid-November. Bitcoin payment platform BitPay recently added PAX to its system, allowing employers and employees alike to both send and receive payments in the stablecoin.