Polkadot (DOT) Lands Coveted Spot on Coinbase Futures: Gains Ground with XRP and DOGE

• Coinbase announced Thursday that it had launched support for perpetual futures contracts for Polkadot as institutional investor demand for DOT continues to rise.
• DOT joined other prominent cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, XRP, and Dogecoin, on Coinbase’s international trading platform amid a price decline in the past week.

As institutional interest in Polkadot continues to rise, Coinbase has announced the launch of perpetual futures contracts for DOT on its international trading platform.

Coinbase International Exchange announced the new DOT futures contracts yesterday. In addition to Polkadot, Coinbase added ICP and NEAR contracts and revealed that limit, market, stop, and stop limit orders are all now available for the three. The three were also added to Coinbase Advanced.

Our DOT-PERP, ICP-PERP, and NEAR-PERP markets are now in full-trading mode on Coinbase International Exchange and Coinbase Advanced. Limit, market, stop, and stop limit orders are all now available. pic.twitter.com/8RKfR7u2GW

— Coinbase International Exchange (@CoinbaseIntExch) February 22, 2024

Coinbase International Exchange is the global arm of the American exchange that serves jurisdictions beyond the US. It lists 23 contracts, and over the past 30 days, it has processed close to $12 billion in trading volume. Some of the most popular perpetual futures contracts (PERPs) on the platform are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP.

Coinbase Advanced, on the other hand, is the exchange’s avant-garde trading platform that targets professional traders. It replaced Coinbase Pro with extra features such as staking and more indicators and charts.

Upon launch, the PERPs for DOT, ICP and NEAR are already attracting interest. At press time, the DOT-PERPs had processed $28,000 in trading volume with over $17,000 in open interest.

What’s Next for DOT?

DOT trades at $7.35 at press time, shedding 2.3% in the past day and over 5.5% in the past week, in stark contrast to the upward momentum that saw the token shake off a rough start to the year and surge from $6.3 in late Jan. to $8 barely three weeks later.

Technical readings give contrasting outlooks. DOT’s relative strength index and moving average convergence divergence give bullish readings, but it’s trading below its 20-day moving average, which signals upcoming bearish movements.

On the lower side, DOT has found great support above the $7 level where, after a steep decline earlier this week, it consolidated, reversed the trend and set off on a price recovery, as shown below.

On the upper side, the resistance level remains at $8. In its recent rally over the past month, DOT surged from around $6 to $8 in around 20 days, but after failing to breach the resistance, it lost its momentum and has been dipping since.

According to one analyst, DOT is also forming a pennant pattern, which could signal an upcoming bullish breakout. Pennant patterns are formed after a significant movement is recorded, and then the asset starts consolidating with converging trend lines, or the pennant. After this consolidation, the asset usually records a breakout in the same direction as the initial significant price movement. In DOT’s case, the initial movement was a price increase, as shown below.