North America’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has introduced crypto pair-to-pair trading. In simple words, this means that users with accounts on its trading platform will be able to convert one cryptocurrency to another. The new feature is called Coinbase Convert and its initial edition will facilitate conversion from bitcoin to bitcoin cash, ethereum, ethereum classic, litecoin, and 0x. It is being rolled out gradually to users on the Coinbase platform. “We’ll gather customer feedback along the way and continue to iterate on the feature over time,” the company stated on its blog. 

Anna Marie Clifton, product manager at Coinbase, told online publication Coindesk that that the trading pairs are mostly used by its retail users for interaction with decentralized applications (dapps) that require specialized tokens. Coinbase is late to the game in introducing crypto trading pairs, which are fairly common at other exchanges. 

Crypto trading pairs are generally used to arbitrage between prices at different exchanges. They also serve an important function during times of volatility, when traders move holdings from one cryptoasset to another. According to an earlier report by Diar, an online publication, trading pairs for bitcoin, ethereum’s ether, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ripple’s XRP and stablecoin Tether accounted for 70% of all trading volume at exchanges. A report by Blockchain Transparency International this week estimated that 80% of top 25 crypto trading pairs for bitcoin on Coinmarketcap is wash traded meaning traders trade against their own bets to boost trading volume at the exchanges.