Crypto exchange Binance.US to offer zero-fee bitcoin trading

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss reports that Binance.US is looking to offer zero-fee bitcoin trading.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We've got the opening bell coming up in about 5 and 1/2 minutes. And ahead of that, we want to look at some movers, early movers here. Oh, we've got the trading and crypto related names that are trading lower. In particular, Coinbase and Robinhood are slumping anew. And this is after Binance US announced it will offer zero-fee Bitcoin trading. So the latest in potential competition here for those various platforms. And already, Binance is saying it might plan to eliminate trading fees for other types of cryptocurrencies as well. So increased competition there.

BRAD SMITH: There's a larger question of for all of the growth strategy that Robinhood particularly had laid out, as they were running up to their public debut, and Coinbase, for the same matter, how much they were depending on people opting into creating new accounts, really looking at the broader cryptocurrency landscape and the growth that-- and the trajectory that Coinbase and Robinhood had really pegged to that. Now, of course, it was also laid out in their risk factors, but when you do see a pullback like we do in the price action of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as well, that sends a shockwave, not just through the number of people who are trading the equity shares of a Robinhood and a Coinbase, but especially through the growth strategy that both of these companies had laid out going forward.

JULIE HYMAN: Right. In other words, as goes the prices of these--

BRAD SMITH: So, too.

JULIE HYMAN: --so, too, goes the platforms on which you trade them. Over the past 24 hours, we have seen Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX step in to help some of the struggling platforms, offering various credit facilities to the likes of BlockFi. And CZ, Changpeng Zhao of Binance, out at a conference, making some comments, saying that that's a good thing that you should be supportive, right, of other firms. He didn't say specifically about Sam Bankman-Fried, but in general.

But he also had some commentary about whether Bitcoin has bottomed. He said the worst part is probably over for the cryptocurrency selloff. He said that at the Point Zero Forum in Zurich and said that basically we have seen these various startups and technology stress because of what's going on. He said, we're still seeing some of the cascading effects, but each time it cascades, luckily, it's a smaller number. So in other words, the washout that we've heard some investors talk about, he seems to be suggesting that we're nearing an end of that. Is he right? I don't know. I mean, obviously, the guy is talking his book as well. He wants it to be over.

BRAD SMITH: And this is as some of the technical analysis and even the strategists that we've had conversations with and gotten some of their price targets, I think about Anastasia Amoroso last week, who told us $15,000 could be where this bottoms at. And we continue to see even more low markers in terms of where that bottoming could actually take place for Bitcoin.

I think what's more notable here, too-- and I continue to come back to this because it's probably the least speculative of the major cryptos out there. And that is Ethereum because of the consensus model and network and even more of the buildout and scaling that's taking place over the course of this year in phases.

And the Ethereum price that we're looking at right now, just barely sitting above $1,000 after it dipped below that marker over the weekend, I think that's amazingly important to keep close tabs on here because if you have some of the other trading operations that have started up within the larger financial institutions that had that whale money to throw around, this could perhaps be one of those entry points that they look at to say, OK, a consensus model makes a lot more sense to us than having a speculative asset that we continue to pour money into right now.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, we'll see. See what ends up happening.