Binance Offers XRP Base Pairs, Generalized ALTS Market

[Ozark]

XRP is one of the assets showing a significant level of decoupling from Bitcoin (BTC) prices, and offers a risk hedge in new base pairs.

Ripple’s XRP has become a digital currency for base pairs on Binance, the exchange announced recently. In a drive to expand offerings, Binance will add TRX/XRP pairs, as well as Zcoin pairs, XZC/XRP.

In addition to XRP base pairs, Binance will also move on to create new ALTS markets, to replace the Ethereum (ETH) markets. ETH has been one of the base currencies on Binance, but the volatility of late has turned the markets into low-liquidity, high-risk propositions.

“The original ETH Trading Market (ETH) will be renamed into the ALTS Trading Market, to support more trading pairs with different quote currencies,” explained Binance, as ALTS is not a new type of coin, but a generalized market based on multiple altcoins.

The addition of new pairs will depend on the participation of altcoin projects in the Binance charity program, commented CEO Changpeng Zhao:

We will prioritize adding more pairs for the projects that have donated to our charity at this (even thought we never mentioned this during our fund raising efforts). Happy holidays!

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) December 24, 2018

The move may lead to more cases of decoupling from Bitcoin prices, as altcoins usually follow cycles in which their price against BTC fluctuates. But separate altcoin projects may want to be emancipated from the influence of BTC pairs in the future.

Binance has already expanded its pairs by offering a general market for dollar-pegged stablecoins, which includes a basket of several types of stablecoins, going beyond the Tether (USDT) market. While Bitcoin maximalists believe there is no need for altcoins, some projects have been loud about a price decoupling, including TRON (TRX), as well as XRP.

In an additional reorganization, Binance disabled all Bytecoin (BCN) withdrawals starting from December 24, after the coin’s delisting. In the next two days, Binance will buy back all BCN at 20 Satoshi until December 26.

In the past days, XRP had another rally upward from recent lows, going as high as $0.448, before returning to $0.43. TRX prices rallied last week, adding 70% to their price, to trade at $0.22.

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