GDAX Will Launch BCH-EUR Trading on January 24

The GDAX trading platform has become a lot more popular over the past few months. There are several reasons for this growth, including the general influx of new cryptocurrency traders. The company has also been looking for ways to integrate Bitcoin Cash. European users have had to wait for access to a euro market due to insufficient liquidity. That wait is almost over, as the market will go live on January 24.

BCH-EUR Market is Coming to GDAX

Ever since GDAX announced support for Bitcoin Cash, there has been a lot of excitement among BCH users. More specifically, there is genuine interest in this alternative version of Bitcoin, mainly because it is both cheaper and faster to use. As a result, the “airdropped” currency has soared in value, even though it is far away from its all-time high right now. With all cryptocurrency markets recovering, prices will eventually go back to normal, though.

The launch of BCH trading on GDAX has not been without its issues, mind you. The trading had to be halted within the first 24 hours because people were clearly manipulating the price. Those matters have finally been resolved, as BCH-USD trading is available on the platform once again. So far, it seems to be generating a fair amount of volume, though it’s nothing spectacular. The exchange is still a more than welcome addition to the list of trading platforms supporting fiat gateways for BCH.

One thing clearly lacking, however, is a BCH-EUR market. GDAX offers EUR-based markets for all other currencies it currently supports, yet Bitcoin Cash is not one of them. The company decided not to offer this market due to a clear lack of liquidity. It was a rather interesting decision at the time, although everyone knew it was merely a temporary measure. At that time, there was no indication if and when such a market would ever be added to GDAX.

In a recent tweet, the company announced this new fiat currency trading pair would go live on the platform on January 24. It is great news for all Bitcoin Cash supporters, even though Europe is a very small market for all cryptocurrencies these days. It is far less significant than the USD and KRW markets right now. Even so, more liquidity related to fiat currencies can never be considered a bad thing. There are very few options when it comes to BCH/EUR trading right now.

In fact, the only other exchange offering this market is Kraken. Its BCH/EUR market generated US$22.6 million in volume over the past 24 hours, which is not spectacular. It will be interesting to see if GDAX can do better in this regard once its new market goes live. Some competition among fiat currency exchanges is definitely a good thing, as there is a growing need for such solutions. The European cryptocurrency markets will need to expand at some point, and GDAX may be the platform that facilitates that.

For the time being, we will have to wait and see how all of this affects the Bitcoin Cash price in the future. The cryptocurrency markets are still experiencing some bearish momentum after the onslaught earlier this week. Slowly but surely, things are heading back in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We can only hope no one will try to manipulate the new market’s order book once trading goes live.