By
Steve Muchoki
May 13th, 2024
The Coinbase Prime platform will handle large-sized orders and will serve as a one-stop solution for “advanced trading, battle-tested custody, and financing”.
On Monday, September 20, the Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) announced its institutional-grade crypto brokerage platform “Prime”. This is yet another attempt from Coinbase to swap more institutional players to its platform.
What will Coinbase Prime Offer?
The Coinbase Prime is a one-stop solution for “advanced trading, battle-tested custody, and financing”. Thus, the Coinbase Prime platform will swiftly handle orders that are significantly larger in size compared to its retail trading platform.
During the beta testing of Coinbase Prime, clients used this platform to “execute some of the largest trades in the industry”. Some of the biggest clients of Coinbase include Meitu, MicroStrategy, and One River Digital Assets.
During the official announcement, Coinbase’s vice president for institutional products, Greg Tusar wrote:
“Along the way, we’ve continued to add more venues to our smart router which allows clients to achieve the best available price, more assets to our custody capability, enhanced our post-trade reporting capabilities, and added to our post trade credit financing options”.
The smart contract router feature of Coinbase Prime will provide institutions broader access to the crypto market. Upon placing the order, Coinbase will route this order to its network of venues thereby offering the best all-in price for trade including the trading fees. Coinbase assured that it has conducted due diligence for its trading venues.
During its recent earnings call, Coinbase update that it has onboarded more than 9000 financial institutions. Besides, the exchange also noted that it has partnered with industry giants like Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.
Coinbase is also working on offering real-time market analytics. It will also have a mobile app enabling “portfolio access and consensus on-the-go”.
Coinbase Rolls Back the Launch of Its Lend Product
The latest announcement from Coinbase comes just at a time of its ongoing battle with the US SEC. Amid fears of the SEC lawsuit, Coinbase has decided to roll back the launch of its Lend product with the US SEC.
Last Friday, September 17, Coinbase announced that it won’t be launching the USDC APY program. It also added:
“As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we’ve made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program announced below. We have also discontinued the waitlist for this program as we turn our work to what comes next”.
Coinbase noted that thousands of its customers had shown interest in the project. Although several exchanges like Gemini have been already offering crypto lending services in the market, the SEC has a problem with the Coinbase platform also offering staking facility with 4% APY. The securities regulator isn’t comfortable with the fact that the users will forfeit their crypto holdings to Coinbase and its partners.
