Coinbase Seeks licenses to Expand its Presence Across Europe
- Although the company announced an 18% layoff of its workforce owing to the prevailing crypto winter, Coinbase still appears resolute in its bid to secure an effective presence in many European countries.
Despite the prevailing crypto downturns, Coinbase Global Inc. (NASDAQ: COIN), the biggest U.S based cryptocurrency trading and investment platform is currently accelerating efforts to widen its scope and services across countries in Europe. Reportedly, the global exchange has started requesting permits from authorities in countries lacking its presence in Europe.
While Bitcoin price, $65,331.20, is down 43 percent in the past year, Coinbase stock is trading 80 percent lower YTD. Nevertheless, the company still has a strong backing and approximately $10 billion in market capitalization.
Coinbase Plans Entry into Europe
Worth noting, that the exchange has operations in the U.K, Germany, and Ireland. Now, it intends to take the expansion crusade beyond the status quo by unveiling operations in Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
The company is making respectable moves to widen its market outreach despite its recent 18 percent layoff.
The Vice President of the cryptocurrency trading platform, Nana Murugesan, confirmed the ongoing efforts by the firm to establish an unalloyed presence in the U.K, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and many more. He stressed that the crypto exchange has already gotten an employee in Switzerland.
According to the Vice President, Coinbase intends to recruit a supervisor that will overlook all its services in Europe. He, however, recalled how Coinbase extended its operations to the U.K and Europe, stressing that the decision was initially tough until it began to birth bountiful prospects.
More so, the vice president of the exchange’s legal arm, Katherine Minarik hinted at the move by Coinbase to secure licensing in alignment with the anti-laundering laws in the highlighted European countries. Minarik believes the acquisition of those licenses will provide an avenue for the exchange to easily spread the gospel of its services to all the European nations.
Market Outlook
The exchange is facing a fierce battle to gain an advantage in the U.S over closest rivals like Binance U.S, Crypto.com, and FTX.
However, Binance and FTX are prominent figures outside the U.S market. Recently, the two cryptocurrency exchanges gained licenses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Also, Binance can boast of having a strong presence in Europe because it has operational licenses in Italy and France.
Meanwhile, Coinbase is way behind in the competition because its competitors are progressing in numerous markets beyond the U.S. Lately, Coinbase has felt the harsh implication of the current dip in the cryptocurrency market.
Additionally, Coinbase posted a 27 percent decline in its revenue for the first quarter of 2022. Like other cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase relies on charges from transactions on its platform. The recent dip has forced a reduction in trading volume on Coinbase, resulting in a decline in revenue.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency exchange intends to adopt NFTs and Staking features in the near future to increase its revenue.
Nevertheless, Coinbase isn’t the only affected cryptocurrency firm affected by the dip. 3AC, Celsius, Babel finance, etc, are currently enduring a difficult time. Notable factors like the astronomical interest rates by the Federal Reserve and the downfall of the algorithm stablecoin, UST, contributed to the unrest.
Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”
