While Binance is being slammed with warnings by regulators from different corners of the world, Coinbase is gearing up for an aggressive market expansion beyond the western world where it has a huge customer base.
In a recent blog update, Coinbase which recently went public through a direct listing and has its COIN stock trading on Nasdaq had its CEO, Brian Armstrong laying the next frontiers the exchange seeks to pursue in the coming months and years. Brian detailed Coinbase’s next plans part of which he said that although Coinbase is a highly regulated cryptocurrency exchange, it plans on opening its door wider to the more unregulated DeFi sector.
“Our centralised (CeFi) products will continue to play a critical role in the growth of the cryptoeconomy. But the decentralised cryptoeconomy will also be a major area of growth. With all of this new innovation coming to crypto, we have a massive opportunity to give our customers access to these new products and features.”
As part of its new plans, Brian Armstrong stated that Coinbase will work on listing more assets (DeFi in particular) into its exchange. Although it recently started listing newer DeFi tokens, Coinbase’s approach is more of a cautious one when compared with the swift pace at which Binance and other non-US based exchanges go about it. For this, Brian says
“We need to move faster. We need to treat asset issuers as the very important customers they are, rolling out the red carpet, and courting them, and promptly responding to their inquiries.”
To achieve the intended neck-breaking speed of listing DeFi and other cryptoassets with the aim of competing with the likes of Binance, Coinbase is cutting down its legal review questions from 70 to 12. This should help speed up answering the questions by asset issuers.
Brian also stated that Coinbase will go-ahead to create an “experimental” zone for new assets. Just like Binance had earlier done for its users brandishing its “DeFi Zone”, Coinbase’s experimental zone will afford traders and investors to trade these newer tokens but with risk disclaimers attached.
Perhaps the high point of Brian’s update on Coinbase’s next step is that his exchange will now move towards embracing third-party interfaces and self-custody. Coinbase intends to target even core DeFi users such that its users will be able to access any app built on decentralised crypto rails. With DeFi growing by over 88 times within a year, Brian surely sees a gold mine that must never be left untapped.
Moreso, Brian admits Coinbase has been more focused on the western market in the US, UK and EU region rather than pursuing a more global market. He expects this to change saying:
“We’re going to flip this approach on its head by shipping more products in international markets on day one, while still partnering with regulators in more established markets to ensure our products are compliant with their local rules”.