Coinbase Suspends Trading of FLOKI, GIGA and TURBO Memecoins in New York

Coinbase has revealed it would disallow the trading of the FLOKI, GIGA and TURBO memecoins in New York.

Coinbase will no longer allow the trading of the FLOKI, GIGA, and TURBO memecoins in New York. This change will go into effect at 2:00 PM ET on April 14.

Coinbase is shutting down the trading of several memecoins in New York as part of a standard coins and instruments evaluation process, the company announced on Thursday.

The latest update from its regular review of coins traded on the platform was the reason for suspending the trading of these memecoins, Coinbase stated.

These tokens will no longer be available to all Coinbase users in New York, although trading on them can still go on in other regions.

Why Is Coinbase Disallowing Trading on These Memecoins?

Coinbase claims that the decision was made after its regular review procedure: They only made that announcement, and legal experts foresaw potential consequences.

However, a popular Web3 attorney, who goes by the handle "Ariel Givener" on X, formerly Twitter, believes the connection is related to an ongoing legal issue in New York involving Coinbase.

Coinbase launched these tokens as a part of its continuous project expansion. For instance, after the crypto exchange listed FLOKI in November, its price peaked for five months.

Later, in December, Coinbase integrated TURBO and GIGA, leading to a 15% and 37% price increase for these tokens, respectively.

When tokens are listed, their prices rise due to the “Coinbase Effect” but eventually fall.

Memecoins: A New Trend in the Crypto Market

Though thought of as fun projects, memecoins are now a serious industry. For example, Pump.fun, a platform built on the Solana network, was officially launched in January. More than 8.5 million meme tokens have been created on it.

Since memecoins don’t have an ownership structure or create passive income, the SEC claims they aren’t securities. Hence, for now, they are not subject to SEC regulation.

Meanwhile, talking about this topic at length, MEXC COO Tracy Jin claimed that memecoins will improve the DeFi space. However, he cautioned that investors should research these currencies and prepare for erratic market conditions.

Jin also stated that Coinbase just took a step that would change the cryptocurrency market, demonstrating its constant evolution.

He noted that the crypto exchange is expanding its product offerings to cater to the evolving demands of the market, which is adjusting to new technologies and financial instruments.

Moreover, Jin highlighted the importance of legal and regulatory adjustments as the cryptocurrency industry matures.

According to him, this factor is influencing the integration of new coins on trading platforms. Finally, Jin mentioned that Pump.fun’s ‘graduation rate’ is falling and now stands at less than 1% for the fourth week in a row as the platform hits a brick wall.

This rate refers to tokens that complete the incubation period and become fully traded on the Solana decentralized exchange (DEX).

A token must complete liquidity and trading benchmarks to graduate. According to on-chain data from Dune Analytics, Pump.fun’s graduation rate has stayed below 1% for the last four weeks, beginning on February 17.

This is the first time this has happened since the platform’s launch.

Pump. fun’s graduation rate has always been low. Its best week was last November, when 1.66% of memecoins built on this platform became available on the open market.

But at the time, this percentage was more critical than it is currently because of the greater number of tokens that were introduced on the market.

The 1.67% completion rate equalled about 5,400 tokens joining Solana’s decentralized finance economy in a week since 323,000 tokens were minted on Pump.fun during the week beginning November 11.

However, this time, the completion of 15 coins out of 8,788 tokens that week in February was clocked.

This analysis showed that weekly token completion had fallen to a four-week average of about 1,500 coins at the time of writing due to a decline in the volume of token production on both Pump.fun and Solana.

Favorable Market Conditions No Longer Affect Memecoins

This comes as investors are pulling back from investing in memecoins, which they view as a quick money grab for the inventors or as degenerate lottery tickets.

President Donald Trump is among the political leaders who have launched their memecoins.

CoinGecko data showed that Trump’s token dropped 84% from its peak on January 19.

Despite increased liquidity, memecoins continue to have difficulties, according to Matrixport.

“The strong growth of the U.S. dollar has put pressure on BTC by decreasing dollar-denominated liquidity,” observed analysts at Matrixport in February.

The value of the U.S. dollar has declined since then. The U.S. Dollar Index (D