Coinbase Custody Launches in Ireland, Targets European Clients
- The launch of Coinbase Custody International Inc. was driven by client demand for institutional-grade custodial services in Europe.
- With its presence in Europe, the new entity will have the goal of providing its clients with “greater legal and regulatory clarity”.
Brian Armstrong, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Coinbase, at Consensus 2019. CoinDesk
Coinbase has expanded its institutional custody business with the launch of a new Coinbase Custody regional base in Dublin, Ireland, the company announced on 30 January.
According to the Thursday blog post, the launch of Coinbase Custody International Inc. was aimed at meeting investor demands for institutional-grade custodial services in Europe. The new entity will not only provide the same services as Coinbase Custody, but will also take over all staking activity performed by Coinbase.
Since its launch in 2017, Coinbase Custody has been able to increase cryptocurrency assets under its management to over $7 billion. Even though the company already served European-based clients, it decided to that a dedicated presence in Europe will better meet the needs of its clients in the region.
The company further said in its announcement that the new entity will provide its clients with “greater legal and regulatory clarity”, given that it offers its services in a “completely localized way, with local staff, localized SLAs [Service-Level Agreements] and in compliance with local laws”. The firm also said that it plans to launch new features, and increase the number of supported assets on the platform, over the coming months.
As Coinbase puts it, “Europe is our fastest growing geographic segment”, which explains the company’s push into the region. Last October, the firm was able to obtain an e-money license from the Central Bank of Ireland, which helped the exchange open up the E.U. and European Economic Area (EEA) markets.
A month later, the firm expanded the support of its Coinbase Visa Debit Card with five more crypto options, bringing the total number of supported cryptocurrencies to nine. At the time the card became available in 29 European countries, with the addition of Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Poland, Romania and Sweden.
- A little over $13 million in altcoins were sent to crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase in the past 24 hours, which is in accordance with a September court order.
- The court ordered a phased liquidation process, which allows the bankruptcy estate to sell $3.4 billion worth of digital assets over a certain period of time.
Shutterstock
- Coinbase’s Base blockchain was made available to the public on Wednesday, featuring over 100 dApps and services as part of its ecosystem.
- In order to show its capabilities and promote its mainnet partners, Base has also launched an event called “Onchain Summer” that will allow users to mint exclusive NFTs on the network.
- During an interview with FT, CEO Brian Armstrong said that before the lawsuit a SEC staff member had said that all crypto except BTC was security, and should be delisted.
- When asked how he came to that conclusion, the SEC staff member reportedly said “we’re not going to explain it to you, you need to delist every asset other that Bitcoin”.