The leading US crypto exchange Coinbase says its user base of retail and institutional traders has grown to 35 million.
In its Crypto H1 2020 report, the San Francisco-based firm says in the first half of 2020, it witnessed a significant uptick of institutional investors such as multi-strategy hedge funds, venture capitalists, leading university endowments and large family offices that directly buy digital assets.
“Today, Coinbase operates the largest regulated exchange in the world – a central pool of liquidity that combines the assets of our 35mm retail users and institutional clients.”
The exchange says a growing number of these institutional clients are convinced that cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin (BTC), offers an alternative to the current financial system regulated by central banks.
“Investors are still in the early days of untangling the relationship between macroeconomic policy and crypto, but we are seeing a growing base of our institutional clients organizing around the thesis that BTC, specifically, provides exposure to an alternative monetary policy system with supply mechanics that are diametrically opposed to those of central banks in 2020: scarcity versus expansion, predictability versus uncertainty, decentralization versus centralization, software versus humans.”
Coinbase also says it noticed increased interest in crypto among fintechs and brokerages including Square, Robinhood, SoFi, eToro, Paysafe, and Zeux. The US crypto exchange says it’s preparing for the entry of new players in the crypto space as it expects the trend to accelerate in the coming years
“We anticipate that the combination of Coinbase’s rapidly advancing crypto-as-a-service capabilities, which make adding crypto easier for fiat-native businesses, as well as visible success stories from public companies that have embraced digital assets, will continue to drive new entrants from the fintech, brokerage, and banking sectors.”
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