Coinbase may be the bane of many traders’ lives, their customer support is pretty much non-existent, their fees are higher than most other exchanges, coin prices are often higher than elsewhere, transaction times are woeful, and don’t even bother trying to access the site when there is high traffic – it probably won’t be online. Trading is often suspended when there is a lot of demand as in the recent case with Litecoin. So how can Coinbase get on top of things during this unprecedented spell of crypto mania?
Crypto traders needed some feel-good news about Coinbase and it came in the form of a recent CNBC interview with co-founder and chief executive Brian Armstrong. During the brief dialogue, he mentioned how the Bitcoin boon has made crypto trading in general ‘Stock Market 2.0’. To facilitate this Coinbase will be offering a new service called ‘Coinbase Custody’ which is seeking to become the first qualified custodian for institutions that are looking to store digital currency.
Continuing on the theme of stock market evolution into crypto markets Armstrong said that Coinbase has plans to expand its altcoin listings from the current three they have available next year.
“The ones that are the most exciting to us that we have on the platform today are bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin, but there’s many more that are going to be added to the platform in 2018 and I think this is going to be a really exciting space for all kinds of institutional investors to make money.”
There is a lot of conjecture at the moment as to how many and what altcoins they will be adding to their marketplace. The likelihood is that they will choose the ones that have the greatest demand; a good indicator for this is the market capacity. In addition to Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum already listed the others in the top ten are Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Iota, Dash, Monero, Nem and Bitcoin Gold.
He went on to state that the firm has avoided listing any ICOs on the exchange due to regulatory uncertainty and SEC legislation. A number of factors needed careful consideration before a new asset can be listed;
“These include regulatory risk, diligence on the team, security audit on the coin, and the customer demand.”
Armstrong signed off by stating Coinbase is “looking to provide a safe place where customers can have assets that they trust and participate in this market.”
