Bitcoin exchange Coinbase solidifies institutional services

Today, US bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced several new services in order to solidify its suite of institutional products.

Foremost in the intuitional reorganization, Coinbase Custody will move forward in partnership with an SEC-regulated broker-dealer.

Coinbase Custody will now offer a service that couples Coinbase’s cryptocurrency security with third-party auditing and financial reporting validation that operates at the high standard of an SEC-regulated, custodial broker-dealer.

Coinbase also announced Coinbase Markets to develop its electronic markets via opening a new engineering office in Chicago. Coinbase Markets will provide a centralized pool of liquidity for all Coinbase products.

Coinbase Markets will introduce new features like low latency performance, on-premise data center colocation services, institutional connectivity and access, and settlement and clearing services. These additions will allow for a more efficient price discovery process to occur, creating tighter markets, deeper liquidity, and increased certainty of execution.

Further, the Coinbase team has announced the launch of Coinbase Prime, a new platform designed specifically to provide a suite of tools and services that institutional investors rely on when trading cryptocurrency.

Over the course of the year, Coinbase intends to offer lending and margin financing products to qualified clients, high touch and low touch execution services like over-the-counter (OTC) trading and algorithmic orders, and new market data and research products. The exchange will also introduce platform improvements like multi-user permissions and whitelisted withdrawal addresses.

Lastly, out of its New York office, Coinbase will begin the Coinbase Institutional Coverage Group focused exclusively on serving the needs of institutional clients by providing sales, sales trading, research, market operations, and client services support.