- Cobinhood - A Zero Trading Fee Cryptocurrency Exchange
- How Does it Work?
- User Experience & Interface
- Cobinhood Team
- Coin Supply, Fund Allocation & Sustainability
- Trading History
- Where Can You Buy Cobinhood Coin?
- Where Can You Store It?
- Further Developments
- Conclusion
Cobinhood – A Zero Trading Fee Cryptocurrency Exchange
Say hello to Cobinhood, a cryptocurrency exchange that charges zero fees for trading. Yes, you heard that right, zero! With a cheeky take on the Robinhood theme, Cobinhood has decided to move in on the zero-fee crypto exchange game.
Of course, zero-fee trading is not a particularly new innovation. The US-based zero-fee exchange Robinhood trades only in traditional markets and only for US investors. Cobinhood has jumped on this limitation and is building a business model with the hope of reaching traders and investors not only from the US but around the world.
Cobinhood launched their own coin, COB, through an ICO in September/October of 2017. Despite intentions to offer fiat-to-crypto exchange they only provide crypto-to-crypto exchange on their platform at this time. This may change in the future depending on government regulation for fiat-to-crypto exchange which is currently affecting many exchanges around the world.
It’s difficult to estimate how successful they have been since launch, however, the Cobinhood PR team has reported a sign-up of 13 000+ accounts on the first day of operation with more users jumping on board the platform in the following days.
How Does it Work?
COB is an ERC20 token based on the Ethereum standard. You can store your COB as a token in an Ethereum wallet or on the Cobinhood exchange itself.
Key Features
Benefits of holding COB tokens include the following:
- Tokens that Cobinhood underwrites will be cheaper for COB holders
- 50% Off margin trading loan interest
- 50% off withdraw fees when paid in COB
- COB Tokens gained from withdrawal fees will be burned quarterly
- Required for taking part in trading contests
- Required for receiving airdrops
Benefits of trading on the Cobinhood exchange:
- Zero trading fees
- Variety of trading pairs: BTC, ETH, EOS, USDT, COB, BCH
- 24/7 customer service
- Decentralized exchange in development
- High-performance order matching engine
- Transparency with online and offline wallets for public audits
- Secure online transactions with 2-factor authentication and email confirmations
- Secure offline transactions with a multisignature wallet and hardware security modules located in different countries
- All crypto assets backed by insurance
Cobinhood Compared to Other Exchange Tokens
The COB token seems like it draws on similar advantages to other popular exchange tokens like Binance Coin (BNB) and Kucoin Shares (KCS). The thinking behind this is to increase demand for their token over the long run and in favor of other cryptocurrencies by providing some very attractive benefits, as listed above. This strategy has worked out well so far for Binance as demand for their BNB token has surged. It remains to be seen whether this will be a positive development for Cobinhood as well.
Cobinhood Withdrawal Limits
Cobinhood has put the following withdrawal limits in place to protect user funds. You’ll want to keep this in mind should you plan on holding a large amount of COB on the exchange:
Should you want to upgrade these limits, you’ll need to provide additional verification in line with know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) practices being introduced into the exchange industry overall.
User Experience & Interface
The trading interface is quite slick and intuitive and uses the usual tools needed to trade your cryptocurrency of choice. Consequently, a charting package with order book, an order form, trade history, and coin balance are all standard in this version of the interface.
The exchange already hosts a wide variety of cryptocurrencies including the big caps and a number of smaller tokens which can be traded against Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and of course the native COB token.
Cryptocurrency is a global phenomenon and Cobinhood understands this by providing support for 13 different languages. English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese, Traditional & Simplified Chinese are all supported. Trading on Cobinhood is available through their web interface and also via mobile for iOS and Android.
Comprehensive documentation on a variety of topics (ranging from trading to account security and so on) is also available should you need detailed tutorials. Furthermore, Cobinhood aims to provide 24/7 online customer service and a customer success team which will respond to queries within a day.
Cobinhood Team
Founder Popo Chen and co-founder Wei-Ning Huang established the company in 2017 with headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan. Tony Scott, former U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer, is the primary advisor for the project.
Cobinhood’s main vision is a zero-fee trading platform which maximizes profits for traders both in the spot and margin trading market.
Popo Chen, Founder
Chen Tai Yuan refers to himself as a serial entrepreneur. After graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering he went on to co-found a popular live streaming service for the Asian market. 17 Live Streaming is similar to Periscope with more than 5 million daily active users.
Wei-Ning Huang, Co-Founder
Wei-Ning worked in the open-source space for several years and actively contributed to open-source projects. He subsequently found himself a software engineering role for Google between 2014 and 2017. He specializes in large-scale web applications that require high throughput. With 5 years of blockchain experience, he has an excellent grasp of the technology.
Tony Scott, Advisor
Tony served as third U.S. Federal Chief Information Officer from 2015-2017. During this period he was involved in a number of blockchain-themed projects as well as improving the cybersecurity of government. He currently runs the Tony Scott group providing IT consulting and advisory services to the public and private sectors.
Coin Supply, Fund Allocation & Sustainability
As far as we can tell the team has pulled the white paper (describing the token economics of the project) from the website. In a Reddit post, a Cobinhood representative went on to explain that the ICO white paper was no longer applicable and that an updated version was being prepared.
Investors contributed 13 Million dollars to the ICO. These participants received 50% in tokens while 40% went to the team. The remaining 10% went to a private placement.
All funds raised for the Cobinhood team will be dedicated to the following channels:
- 40% – Product Development
- 20% – Operation
- 20% – Marketing
- 10% – Auditing & Security Compliance
- 10% – Legal Affairs
CoinMarketCap lists a total supply of 1 billion COB (1 000 000 000). The circulating supply (at time of publication) stands at around 362 million or 36% of all coins.
Trading History
The development team launched the Cobinhood exchange on 18 December 2018 along with the opportunity to trade COB for the first time online. COB launched around the $0.33 level before reaching an all-time high of $1.50 at the height of the speculative bubble last year (2017). The cryptocurrency market overall continues to sell off since reaching all-time highs in December. At the time of publication, COB traded around $0.04.
There are a number of factors affecting the market right now. COB is not as well established as it’s Asian competitors. But if and when the next cryptocurrency bull run happens, there might very well be a whole new group of traders flocking to Cobinhood to take advantage of those zero fees.
Where Can You Buy Cobinhood Coin?
You can purchase Cobinhood primarily on their official exchange. There are some alternatives, however. CoinMarketCap lists Mercatox and the decentralized exchange EtherDelta as alternative exchanges. Volume is quite low on these exchanges and in addition, many traders consider EtherDelta to be a platform for advanced users. If you are new to trading, Cobinhood’s official exchange is probably your best option.
Where Can You Store It?
As mentioned previously COB is an ERC20 token. By building on top of the Ethereum blockchain Cobinhood ensured their token was well supported. You have a number of options when storing your COB. Check out our Ethereum wallet guide for some options. The Ledger Nano S and Trezor are popular solutions on the hardware front while Exodus and Jaxx are some wallets of choice on the software side.
Of course, if you prefer convenience you can leave your coins on the exchange and save in transfer fees to and from an external wallet. Keep in mind that external cryptocurrency wallets, hardware ones, in particular, are the safer option should Cobinhood run into any sort of custody problems. Depending on how frequently you trade will determine your need for security over convenience.
Further Developments
The Cobinhood founding team recently (May 2018) announced the launch of a decentralized platform called DEXON at Blockshow Europe 2018 in Berlin.
“DEXON is a block-lattice platform built on the DEXON consensus algorithm that achieves infinitely scalable, permissionless distributed ledger technology.”
IDG Capital, an investment firm that specializes in venture capital, will be investing in the DEXON launch. This new development will affect the original timeline proposed by Cobinhood since their ICO:
As a result of the announcement, the Cobinhood community raised several questions about the relationship between COB and the in-development DEXON platform. The team clarified that Cobinhood will become the exclusive ICO partner for DEXON, providing trading & ICO underwriting services for DEXON. As a result, COB holders will receive the following 2 benefits:
- ICO’s launched on top of DEXON will be cheaper for COB holders
- COB holders will receive the DEXON coin via airdrop at a future date. Details to follow closer to the main network launch.
The Cobinhood decentralized exchange is still in development but it’s now unclear as to when this will be completed and integrated into DEXON.
Users should also be aware that once DEXON goes live COB will most likely no longer be supported as an Ethereum ERC20 token and instead be validated on the DEXON blockchain. We will update storage and implementation details in this post as soon as we receive them.
Conclusion
The cryptocurrency exchange space is heating up and a number of players are scrambling to get a piece of the pie in this very lucrative market. Most notably, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao earlier this year revealed profits of $200 million for the 2nd quarter of 2018. This figure is enormous considering that Binance was only established in July of 2017.
It’s no wonder that many new players are entering this industry. There appears to still be plenty of opportunity for new exchanges as demand for cryptocurrencies grows. Cobinhood is attempting to fill a niche market by providing a zero-fee incentive structure. Traders love zero-fees but are zero-fees enough to keep customers in such a competitive space? A good cryptocurrency exchange is built with many factors in mind.
Cobinhood plans to make up those lost fees by attracting a large customer base and charging fees for premium services like ICO listings and certain advanced trading features. Only time will tell whether this approach will prove to be profitable.
For more information and updates about Cobinhood, you can follow them on the following channels:
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