Coinbase VP Hopes to Lure Institutional Investors With New Crypto Products
*By Madison Alworth*
The most popular Bitcoin trading platform announced changes Tuesday that were designed to attract institutional investors to its exchange.
Coinbase, the six-year-old digital currency platform, said it was launching four new initiatives, including a secure way to store crypto assets, something institutional clients had long requested.
"We really pride ourselves on being the most trusted, the most secure venue, within the cryptocurrency space," said Eric Scro, Coinbase's vice president of finance.
The storage feature, called Coinbase Custody, is accepting applications as of Tuesday. Institutions who want to participate must have at least $10 million in deposits.
The company also introduced a Prime service that gives institutional investors more traditional investing tools and controls; a Markets product that creates a centralized pool of liquidity; and an Institutional Coverage Group that provides client services like sales, research, and market operations.
With more than 20 million accounts, Coinbase is the most popular exchange for Bitcoin and other digital currencies, but it faces stiff competition from ambitious rivals such as Robinhood.
That free stock market trading platform [recently announced](http://fortune.com/2018/05/10/robinhood-stock-crypto-trading/) $363 million in new funding, some of which will go toward building a cryptocurrency trading product by the end of the year.
The [New York Stock Exchange](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/technology/bitcoin-new-york-stock-exchange.html) is reportedly interested in developing a crypto exchange too.
"We at Coinbase, we view ourselves as the cryptocurrency place, the cryptocurrency company," Scro said in an interview Tuesday with Cheddar. "And yes, there is going to be competition, but we welcome that competition."
Scro said that the interest in cryptocurrency that he has seen from institutional investors and would-be rivals like the NYSE is a sign of "the evolution and the maturation of the asset class."
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/coinbase-goes-after-a-new-customer).
Memorial Day rang in the unofficial start of summer here in the United States -- and with it, the unofficial start of summer travel. Whether consumers traveled by air or by land, they probably experienced some form of frustration over the weekend. Flyers faced delays and cancellations, and drivers faced the most expensive gas prices ever recorded on Memorial Day. Zach Griff, Senior Aviation Reporter for the Points Guy, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Next-generation gaming ecosystem Joystick recently raised $8 million in a seed round and is in the process of raising a $110 million Series A funding round. Gaming ecosystems are a relatively new type of platform in the Web3 space, allowing users to maximize their play-to-earn gaming opportunities, exchange crypto-currencies, and sell their digital assets. Joystick says its platform is flipping the current model on its head by giving players the opportunity to keep 100% of the revenue they earn. Robin Defay, co-founder and CEO of Joystick, and Michael Le, co-founder of Joystick and TikTok content creator, join Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Abe Stein, Head of Innovation at Sports Innovation Lab, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he explains why the top four spots on his company's 2022 list are European soccer clubs and discusses Sports Innovation Lab's plan to publish data on women's pro sports teams in the not-too-distant future.
Joel Birch, Co-Founder and CEO of Stacked, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he explains why he doesn't see any new catalysts that would lead to a Bitcoin rally at the moment. He also reiterates that now is a good time for long-term Bitcoin investors to buy low.
The dating app Bumble has sponsored bills and pushed lawmakers to criminalize the online practice of sending unsolicited nudes or “cyberflashing." Payton Iheme, Bumble's head of public policy for the Americas, joined Cheddar News to discuss why the app was going after the harassing behavior beyond its own platform. "Now, while we went to work internally in the company, and we created something called private detector to automatically blur those images so the user can decide if they want to see them, there's nothing for the rest of the internet," she said. "And so that's why we went to work with these laws."
The holiday weekend saw Disney+ and Netflix competing head-to-head for streaming views as the Disney behemoth kicked off the unofficial start to summer with its release of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" and Netflix responded with the first part of "Stranger Things" Season 4. The streaming giants caught the eye of Wall Street, and Seth Schachner, the managing director at consultancy Strat Americas, joined Cheddar News to break down the heavy hitters. "This is a very tough, competitive game, and I don't see it getting any easier," he said. "I think you'll probably see more consolidation."
