Coinbase, the largest US cryptocurrency exchange and the only one whose stock is publicly traded, hopes to become eligible to offer crypto futures trading. The company is rapidly expanding its repertoire of products and services, recently adding a Bitcoin lending product, support for Apple Pay, and has greatly increased the number of listed tokens.
Key takeaways:
- On Wednesday, Coinbase filed its registration form to become a futures commission merchant with the National Futures Association.
- Futures trading is booming, Binance futures offering alone has recorded a daily trading volume of over $17 billion over the last 24 hours. OKEx and Bybit are home to the second and third largest futures markets, both having recorded roughly $5 billion worth of transactions in the last 24 hours, according to data collected by Skew.
- Futures are derivative financial instruments that obligate parties involved to make a transaction of a certain crypto asset at the before set date and price parameters.
- Most US-based cryptocurrency exchanges are wary of offering futures trading since the sector is poorly regulated and the degree of uncertainty is high.
- While Coinbase has practiced proactive regulatory compliance ever since it was founded in 2012, with moves such as caving to authorities to delist XRP, and make its business dealings wholly transparent in an effort to get listed on Nasdaq, the exchange has recently been threatened with a lawsuit by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the lending product, which the regulator deems problematic.
- The exchange has recently announced that it is planning to raise $1.5 billion in capital through a private offering of senior notes to strengthen its balance sheet and use the funds to make ”continued investments in product development, as well as potential investments in or acquisitions of other companies, products, or technologies.”
- As of the time of this writing, Coinbase (COIN) is trading at $247 per share, which puts the company’s market valuation at $64.7 billion.
