Coinbase Pro Has Good and Bad News Regarding Fees for Traders

Coinbase Pro is changing its fee structure later this week, with bottom tier traders seeing a hike and higher value clients paying less.

The San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange announced the news in a blog post on Friday, saying that, starting March 22, market makers and takers who fall under the pricing tier of up to $100,000 will be subject to total fees of 0.40 percent, as compared to up to 0.30 percent (taker only) currently.

The $100,000 to $1 million tier will stay with the current total fee of 0.30 percent, but that will be shared between makers and takers, while currently takers pay the full fee. The $10 million to $50 million bracket also sees the 0.20 percent total fee unchanged, but split between makers and takers.

For other tiers, though, there are fee reductions in store. Above $100 million and above $1 billion, total fees are being reduced by 50 percent, while tiers in between are benefiting from cuts of 20-30 percent (see image below). All tiers now see makers taking some of the fee burden.

The new fee structure is designed to “increase liquidity by reducing the delta between maker and taker fees,” Coinbase said.

Economist and trader Alex Kruger set out the changes in a tweet with the following comprehensive table:

“All stop orders must now be submitted as limit orders and include a limit price. All currently open stop market orders will be canceled on Friday, March 22 @ 6:00 pm PDT,” the exchange added.

Both limit and stop orders are orders to buy or sell an asset when its price moves past a specified level. However, stop orders cannot be seen by the market until the trade has occurred.

Both Pro and Prime will also introduce a 10 percent market "protection point" for all market orders, according to the blog post, meaning that market orders that move the price in excess of 10 percent will "stop executing and return a partial fill."

“Protection points help prevent large orders from causing more than 10% slippage,” the exchange said.

Coins image via Shutterstock; table courtesy of Alex Kruger