A License to Print Money

A License to Print Money
It is rumored to cost up to $1 million for a listing on Binance, with the only exception being the community coin of the month that’s voted in by platform users. (One source has placed Binance’s listing fee at closer to $350,000, but expresses uncertainty over whether this is a one-off or annual fee.) For many altcoins and ICOs, the cost of a ticket to the high liquidity league is simply too much, limiting these projects to smaller exchanges such as Gate.io and Tradesatoshi. Viacoin developer Romano wouldn’t confirm how much he paid to get VIA on Binance, but conceded that had it not been for a successful crypto trading career, he would have been unable to afford it.

For all their associations with decentralization, cryptocurrencies are still heavily reliant on centralized platforms. Securing support from big exchanges and major hardware and software wallets isn’t essential, but without such adoption, altcoins risk being marginalized and inaccessible to the masses. It’s one of many paradoxes within the crypto space: for crypto to go mainstream, it needs to be on mainstream platforms. Exchanges like Binance and Coinbase are the Facebooks of the cryptoverse; virtual monopolies with the power to make or break projects.