The Zhitong Finance App notes that Coinbase (COIN.US) is trying to benefit from the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies by institutions by expanding services for traditional financial companies.
Liz Martin, head of institutional business at Coinbase, said in an interview in Singapore that as banks increasingly launch their own digital asset services, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US is acting as an infrastructure provider for these institutions, while also vigorously developing its main brokerage business.
Martin said, “Our primary broker business is growing very fast,” and “this is probably one of our fastest growing business segments.”
As traditional finance enters the crypto sector, other crypto companies have also recently expanded their primary brokerage business to provide trading, escrow, financing, and settlement services for institutional packages. Bank of New York Mellon, DBS, and Bank of America have all provided crypto escrow services, and Deutsche Bank also announced plans to launch custodian services last month.
Martin believes there is no conflict of interest in Coinbase's dual role of providing both trading and infrastructure services. She said that deeper participation in traditional finance is beneficial to both businesses.
“Both are driven by the same thing, namely the institutional acceptance of cryptocurrencies and the desire to move more financial services to the chain,” Martin said.
The company announced on Thursday that it will provide escrow services for Circle's USDC stablecoin balance in Samsung wallets through its institutional platform Coinbase Prime. USDC will become the default US dollar stablecoin for Samsung electronic payment service users. It is expected to launch in the US before the end of the month, and Coinbase's escrow service will be extended to another consumer-grade application.
On Wednesday, Coinbase said it has completed the integration of Deribit and will soon connect the US and international crypto derivatives markets into a unified liquidity pool.
Coinbase bought Deribit last year with the intention of narrowing the service gap with offshore competitors such as Binance and OKX. The company said the options product will be launched through the Prime platform in the next few weeks and plans to open it to US retail investors later this year.
This series of news was published during the Singapore Token 2049 conference, which is one of the largest cryptocurrency events in the world, showing Coinbase's ambition to build an “all-purpose exchange” and attract more professional traders. The company plans to launch the rebuilt Coinbase Pro platform before the end of the year.
The background to this expansion was a setback last month: the Clarity Act (Clarity Act), the crypto regulation bill that Coinbase had strongly supported, was blocked from voting in the US.
Just days after the Senate failed to advance the bill, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a five-year exemption to allow tokenized stocks to be traded in the US. Martin said Coinbase has yet to set a launch date for such products in the US.
Asked if the Clarity Act's stagnation affected next year's priorities, Martin said the company's plans “have not changed.”
Overseas expansion is still part of the company's strategy, and Coinbase wants to attract more professional traders outside of the US.
“The Asia Pacific region as a whole is a very, very deep community,” she said. “We have just opened a new office in Singapore and are investing heavily there.”