Coinbase

Coinbase secures crypto asset service provider approval in Italy

Coinbase started providing its cryptocurrency services in Italy a while ago, offering Coinbase card services in the country as of June 2019.

The United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase continues aggressive European expansion by securing approval to offer crypto services in Italy.

Coinbase announced on July 18 that it has obtained the Crypto Asset Service Provider approval from the Italian Anti Money Laundering regulator, Organismo Agenti e Mediatori (OAM).

According to a post by Nana Murugesan, Coinbase’s vice president of international and business development, the approval will allow Coinbase to continue to offer crypto services and launch new products in Italy.

Coinbase started providing its cryptocurrency services in Italy quite a while ago. As previously reported, the exchange was offering Coinbase card services in Italy alongside countries like Spain and Germany as of June 2019.

Murugesan pointed out that Coinbase operates in nearly 40 European countries through dedicated hubs in the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland.

“We are in the process of strengthening our presence across Europe and have registrations or license applications in progress in several major markets in compliance with local regulations,” Murugesan said in the announcement. He added that Coinbase’s goal is to grow its customer base by launching the Coinbase suite of retail, institutional and ecosystem services in each of those markets.

Coinbase is not the first crypto exchange to receive the OAM’s approval. In May 2022, the regulator granted approval to the Binance crypto exchange, allowing the firm to open its new headquarters in Milan.

Related: Coinbase denies reports of selling customer data to the US government

The approval comes in line with Coinbase’s reinforced expansion efforts in Europe. The exchange announced in late June that it was actively working to expand in Europe due to the ongoing cryptocurrency winter. Murugesan said that the company is planning to register in multiple European countries, including Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands.

Coinbase’s new European expansion plans came shortly after the company slashed its staff by 18% in mid-June, citing the economic recession.

OpenSea lays off 20% of its staff, citing ‘crypto winter’

The bear market in Bitcoin and altcoins has had a negative impact on staffing levels at major crypto companies, including exchanges, lending platforms and marketplaces.

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea announced mass layoffs on Thursday, joining other crypto companies in reducing headcount during one of the most volatile periods in the industry’s history. 

Co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer took to Twitter Thursday afternoon to disclose that his company was laying off up to 20% of its staff. In a long message conveyed to employees, Finzer blamed “an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability” for the layoffs. 

“[W]e need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn,” he said, adding:

“The changes we’re making today put us in a position to maintain multiple years of runway under various crypto winter scenarios (5 years at the current volume), and give us high confidence that we will only have to go through this process once.”

The layoffs reflect the dire state of the crypto market, whose combined value has declined by more than two-thirds compared to last year’s peak. That OpenSea, the largest NFT market in the world by volume, was cutting jobs offers a stark realization that no company is safe from the downdraft of the so-called crypto winter.

Related: OpenSea announces new security features to protect users from NFT scams

Mass layoffs at crypto companies have become the norm in recent months, with the likes of Gemini, Crypto.com, BlockFi and Coinbase cutting hundreds of jobs. According to one estimate, crypto companies shed 1,700 payrolls in June alone.

That being said, not every company in the space is reducing staff. Exchange giants Binance, Kraken and FTX have each reaffirmed plans to add more employees in the coming months.

Why Coinbase is banning slide decks and ‘endless meetings’

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is looking for enhanced efficiency from its internal teams, noting that rapidly growing firms often become complacent and slow.

Crypto exchange Coinbase is getting rid of slide decks and “endless meetings” as a way to improve productivity following the purge of roughly 18% of employees last month.

In a July 13 blog post, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted that the company is currently focused on “driving more efficiency” as it continues to scale, pointing to a 200% year-on-year employee growth over 18 months that had started to put a strain on the firm’s organizational structure.

He suggested that many major firms experiencing rapid growth generally end up becoming complacent and slowing down, while great companies do the opposite:

“While this trajectory is natural, it is not inevitable. Every great company, from Amazon to Meta to Tesla, found ways to retain their founding energy in conjunction with appropriate controls, even as they scaled to be much larger than Coinbase is today.”

As part of the focus on efficiency, Armstrong stated the firm is “experimenting with banning slide decks in product engineering reviews” to speed up the product development process.

“Inside growing companies, there’s a danger that product and engineering teams start shipping great slide decks instead of great products,” said Armstrong.

Slide decks are essentially a series of slides used for visual representation when presenting ideas. They are very popular ways to communicate big ideas but have a reputation for frequently not being realized.

“But our customers never see the slide decks we create. They only see the product.”

Armstrong says that he wants his employees to instead show realistic previews of how the products work in real-time using dashboards with metrics, product mockups and the actual product itself.

“The important thing is to get hands-on with the product, see what the customer is seeing (or is about to see), and make it better,” he said.

The crypto exchange boss says he also wants to scrap internal meetings among its product and engineering teams, as Armstrong said they often get bogged down with “endless meetings around prioritization and feature requests.”

The firm will instead be moving to a model where all product and engineering teams will publish APIs under an internal API catalog that will provide “consistent libraries and languages for authentication, logging, instrumentation, etc.”

Such a feature will help different teams benefit from each other’s work “without ever needing to schedule a meeting.”

“In other words, they need to productize their services and allow other teams to use them in a self-service way,” he explained.

Related: Risk profile of crypto markets similar to oil and tech: Coinbase

Armstrong also outlined that the company will be organizing its teams into “small pods” of 10 or fewer people who will be assigned to a specific feature or area, give more decision powers to directly responsible individuals (DRIs) and provide information sharing services between product teams.

This year, Coinbase launched a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, an upgraded mobile wallet app, expanding staking offerings to Solana (SOL) and also has plans to offer futures trading to its clients if its application to operate as a futures commission merchant (FCM) is approved.

The price of Coinbase’s stock COIN has seen a challenging year, however, crashing 78.21% since the start of 2022 to sit at $54.24 at the time of writing, according to data from TradingView.

EU-regulated firm Banking Circle adopts USDC stablecoin

Banking Circle was launched in 2016 with a mission to help payments businesses reach new global markets, avoiding the burdens of traditional banking.

Banking Circle, a European bank focused on cross-border payments, is adopting a major U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin for payment rails.

The firm officially announced on Friday the adoption of the USD Coin (USDC) on its platform as a payment acceptance, processing and settlement method.

The new payment feature is enabled as part of Banking Circle’s new service targeting banks and payment providers, allowing them to facilitate payments outside traditional bank rails.

Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, will be one of the crypto liquidity providers for Bank Circle, the announcement notes.

The USDC adoption by Banking Circle is positioned as a “key step in democratizing global finance” as it provides significant “reconciliation, speed and cost advantages,” the firm said.

Mishal Ruparel, head of virtual asset services at Banking Circle, told Cointelegraph that the USDC integration is the bank’s first move into the digital asset market. “Some of our clients have been serving the crypto space for the past year or two, and we want to support their growth,” he added.

Banking Circle has chosen USDC as their first proposition because it has the “biggest relevance to our clients at this point,” Ruparel noted. “We will be adding other USD pegged stablecoins and those for other currencies in the future,” he said, adding that the firm is targeting a limited number of asset-backed stablecoins in Q3 2022.

Ruparel also predicted that asset-backed stablecoins like USDC will become a more mainstream payment instrument in the future, stating:

“This will allow a lot of companies who sell goods, services, or creative content online the ability to sell, collect funds, and receive their earnings almost anywhere. It also removes a lot of the friction and time needed to transfer internationally.”

Banking Circle was launched in 2016 with a mission to help payments businesses reach new global markets, avoiding the process burdens of traditional banking. Headquartered in Luxembourg, operates as a credit institution under the regulations of the Luxembourg Commission for the Financial Sector.

The firm also offers services in other European countries such as the United Kingdom, operating under limited supervision of the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority.

Related: Circle’s USDC on track to topple Tether USDT as the top stablecoin in 2022

USDC is the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, following only Tether (USDT). The USDC stablecoin was launched in 2018 as a joint project between the Coinbase crypto exchange and Circle, a U.S.-based blockchain payment firm founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013.

Crypto Biz: Coinbase downgraded, 3AC deemed insolvent and Michael Saylor buys the dip

Coinbase, Three Arrows Capital and MicroStrategy headline the latest business news from the world of blockchain.

Coinbase has long been considered an important bellwether of the cryptocurrency market. Last year, when the company was expanding its workforce, adding institutional clients and issuing stock, crypto prices were hitting record highs. Now, in the depths of crypto winter, Coinbase finds itself slashing a fifth of its workforce, losing retail trading volume and contending with downgrades of its credit and stock.

This week’s Crypto Biz dissects Goldman Sachs’ latest downgrade of Coinbase and also looks at the latest developments surrounding Three Arrows Capital.

Goldman Sachs downgrades Coinbase stock to ‘sell’

After a promising debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in April 2021, it has been nothing but down for Coinbase shares. The company, which once had a fully diluted market capitalization of nearly $100 billion, has been caught in a downward spiral amid crypto winter. Recognizing the 80% decline in Coinbase stock, analysts at Goldman Sachs this week downgraded the company to “sell,” which is basically a recommendation that investors liquidate their positions and be done with the stock for now. Goldman isn’t the only firm turning bearish on Coinbase. Earlier this month, credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the company to a Ba3 rating, which is considered a non-investment grade.

21Shares responds to bear market with crypto winter ETP

Swiss asset manager 21Shares is gearing up for crypto winter by launching a new product that allows investors to gain low-cost exposure to Bitcoin (BTC). Earlier this week, the company introduced its 21Shares Bitcoin Core exchange-traded product, also known as CBTC. What makes CBTC so unique is its paltry expense ratio of just 21 basis points, which is 44 basis points below the next cheapest product on the market. Basically, 21Shares wants you to keep stacking sats — or buying shares in its ETP — during the market downturn. Unless you think Bitcoin is dead, the best time to accumulate is during bear markets.

British Virgin Islands court reportedly orders to liquidate 3AC

The brain trust behind Three Arrows Capital, also known as 3AC, has been radio silent over the past few weeks amid reports that the hedge fund is bankrupt. On June 27, a court in the British Virgin Islands ordered that 3AC be liquidated, setting the stage for further volatility in the cryptocurrency market. Although details were sparse, the liquidation ruling came shortly after the crypto exchange Voyager Digital handed 3AC a notice of default for its failure to pay back a massive loan that included 15,250 BTC and 350 million USD Coin (USDC). Buckle up, ladies and gents, the next few months are going to be ugly.

MicroStrategy scoops up 480 Bitcoin amid market slump

Concerns about Michael Saylor’s conviction on Bitcoin were laid to rest this week after the MicroStrategy CEO announced that his company had acquired an additional 480 BTC for $10 million. MicroStrategy is now sitting on a colossal 129,699 BTC valued at a combined $3.98 billion. Given its average purchase price of $30,644 per BTC, the company has a net unrealized loss of around $1.4 billion tied to Bitcoin. With crypto winter only just beginning, it could take years for MicroStrategy to break even on its holdings. Saylor is as unfazed as ever, though.

Don’t miss Where is Bitcoin headed next?

Bitcoin’s paltry rally toward $22,000 earlier this week had some investors excited that a short-term breakout was imminent. Well, that didn’t happen. Now, investors are wondering whether we will see $30,000 or a sub-$17,000 BTC first. In this week’s Market Report, I got to dissect the latest market developments with fellow analysts Jordan Finneseth, Benton Yuan and Marcel Pechman. You can catch the full replay below.

Crypto Biz is your weekly pulse of the business behind blockchain and crypto delivered directly to your inbox every Thursday.

June roundup: Who’s hiring and who’s firing in the crypto space

Binance, Ripple and Kraken are hiring, while Coinbase, Gemini, and Crypto.com have announced staff cuts.

Amid the recent volatility in the crypto market affecting investments and stock prices, many firms made significant staff cuts in the last month while others continued hiring.

In June, major crypto exchange Gemini was among the first to reportedly cut 10% of its employees amid the bear market, saying conditions were “likely to persist for some time.” Coinbase and Crypto.com followed, announcing plans to reduce staff by 18% and 5%, respectively. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong cited the so-called crypto winter as part of the reason for the cuts, but also stated the firm had been growing “too quickly.”

Market conditions largely have not changed following many decisions to downsize, and other firms have been forced to make cuts. Crypto lending firm BlockFi announced it would be reducing staff by roughly 20% on June 13, and Cointelegraph reported on Thursday that FTX was in the process of finalizing a deal to purchase the platform’s remaining assets for $25 million. BlockFi CEO Zac Prince denied reports of the sale.

Austrian crypto and stock trading platform Bitpanda announced on June 24 a mass layoff as it aims to “get out of it financially healthy” amid the current bear market, bringing the company to a “​​size of about 730 people.” At the time of publication, the crypto firm has no current job openings on its website.

However, many companies in the crypto space are continuing to operate as normal, seemingly prepared to weather the storm — at least one is even picking up the slack. Cointelegraph reported that the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority was open to hiring terminated employees from crypto firms in an effort to “bulk up” its capabilities.

Related: How to start a career in crypto? A beginner’s guide for 2022

Globally, Binance and Ripple offered thousands of jobs to replace the ones that were recently dissolved from major crypto exchanges and firms. Kraken also stood out as one of the major cryptocurrency exchanges announcing plans to continue hiring for more than 500 roles in various departments amid the market downturn. Sergey Vasylchuk, CEO of Ukraine-based decentralized staking provider Everstake, announced on June 15 that the firm was “not firing anybody.”

According to data gathered by blockchain jobs site Crypto Jobs List, companies have listed more than 3,000 jobs related to the crypto space in the United States in the last seven days — roughly 37% of all jobs posted in the last 30 days. The United Kingdom and India similarly saw a large number of crypto jobs advertised in the last seven days — 562 and 183, respectively — suggesting the industry still has room for staff.

“Kraken and Binance have shown that they plan to stay around for a long time by looking to grow their headcount during a bear market,” a spokesperson for Crypto Jobs List told Cointelegraph. “The market downturn has meant that individuals who don’t plan to stick around for long are deterred, and only serious candidates that are interested in a long-term career are left to apply, and hiring managers recognise this.”

At the time of publication, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) is under $20,000, having fallen more than 37% in the last 30 days according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro.

Bitcoin price: June close barely beats 2017 high as Coinbase Premium flips positive

The worst month and quarter since 2011 for Bitcoin come as Michael J. Burry warns U.S. stocks are only halfway done with their declines.

Bitcoin (BTC) finished June 2022 just below $20,000 after a last-minute pump saw bulls escape 40% monthly losses.

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

Analyst: Bitcoin could stay “boring” for months

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD spiking higher into the monthly close, which came in at $19,924 on Bitstamp.

With that, the pair narrowly avoided its first-ever monthly close below a previous halving cycle’s all-time high. On Bitstamp in November 2017, Bitcoin reached approximately $19,770.

The success was, at best, touch-and-go for a market that nonetheless sealed its worst monthly losses since September 2011, these coming in at around 37.3%. It was also short-lived, with BTC/USD diving toward $19,000 at the time of writing on July 1.

“Steadily carving out a cycle bottom here,” Philip Swift, indicator creator and analyst at trading suite DecenTrader, summarized in part of Twitter comments after the close.

Bitcoin’s weakness came as United States equities saw dismal results of their own. Q2 2022, commentators noted, was the worst since 1970 for the S&P 500, while the Nasdaq saw its weakest H1 since 1998.

“Adjusted for inflation, 2022 first half S&P 500 down 25-26%, and Nasdaq down 34-35%, Bitcoin down 64-65%,” Big Short investor Michael J. Burry reacted:

“That was multiple compression. Next up, earnings compression. So, maybe halfway there.”

Burry had previously forecast that U.S. monetary policy, currently fixed on driving up interest rates to fight inflation, would be forced to change course before the end of the year.

“Bottoming/accumulation signals everywhere, Major funds/lenders going bust, Worst quarter ever, Nocoiner haters dunking on us, Whole timeline saying this time is different,” William Clemente, lead insights analyst at Blockware, told Twitter followers:

“If we are finding an accumulation zone, will likely still see months of boring & capitulation through time.”

BTC/USD monthly returns chart. Source: Coinglass

Coinbase Pro buyers step up, metric suggests

Among institutional investors, however, there was fresh evidence that BTC was a “buy” at $20,000.

Related: ‘Can’t stop, won’t stop’ — Bitcoin hodlers buy the dip at $20K BTC

As noted by on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, the so-called “Coinbase Premium” returned to positive territory for the first time in two months on June 30.

The Premium is the difference between the BTC price on major exchange Binance and U.S. exchange Coinbase’s institutional arm, Coinbase Pro.

When positive, it means that investors are paying more on Coinbase Pro, suggesting heightened demand. The Premium stood at 0.217 as of June 30.

Coinbase Premium vs. BTC/USD chart. Source: CryptoQuant

“This uptick does not indicate a bull run but obviously, it tells us there are institutional buyers in this price range,” CryptoQuant’s CEO, Ki-Young Ju, commented on the data.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Coinbase providing customer geolocation data to ICE: Report

The U.S. government agency is reportedly using Coinbase Tracer to access customers’ historical geo-tracking data and transactions on over a dozen cryptocurrencies.

A new report has indicated that crypto exchange Coinbase has provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents with a “suite of features” intended for tracking the company’s customers. According to the report, ICE has been granted access to an intelligence-gathering application, called Coinbase Tracer, that provides a variety of forensic data tracking capabilities.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is an government agency under the Department of Homeland Security. The primary purpose of ICE is to protect the country from cross-border crime and illegal immigration.

Coinbase Tracer’s intent is to assist ICE with tracing malicious and fraudulent transactions on blockchains. According to The Intercept, the tool will allow ICE agents to “connect addresses to real-world entities.”

An additional email released by the Freedom of Information Act has shown that ICE wasn’t required to agree to an End User License Agreement with Coinbase. An End User License Agreement is used to describe what users can and cannot do with a company’s software products. Purportedly, this means ICE is free to use the data tracking tool as it wishes with minimal restrictions.

When Coinbase was questioned about these developments, spokesperson Natasha LaBranche merely supplied a link to the company’s website with verbiage addressing the issue. The link on the Coinbase website states “Coinbase Tracer sources its information from public sources and does not make use of Coinbase user data.” The Coinbase spokesperson did not provide information regarding limitations on Coinbase Tracer’s use by ICE.

ICE’s access to Coinbase Tracer stems from a $1.36-million contract it signed with the crypto exchange in September 2021. At the time, the nature of the contract was vague and primarily consisted of Coinbase delivering “application development software as a service” to the agency. 

Related: Coinbase to shut down Coinbase Pro to merge trading services

Coinbase has been in the news a lot lately and for various reasons. As Cointelegraph reported, the exchange is seeking aggressive European expansion to broaden its footprint. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs downgraded Coinbase stock to “sell” on Monday following a more than 80% correction.

Coinbase seeking aggressive European expansion amid crypto winter

Coinbase is already licensed to trade cryptocurrencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany.

Coinbase is expanding its operations into various countries in Europe amid a “crypto winter.” Despite laying off numerous employees and rescinding job offers, Coinbase’s vice president Nana Murugesan revealed intentions to register in Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands.

In Switzerland, the United States-based cryptocurrency exchange has already hired its first employees and is already licensed to trade cryptocurrencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany.

In an interview on June 29, Murugesan stated that the firm is now looking to expand into Europe. Furthermore, amid the cryptocurrency market slump, the company is also open to acquisitions in the region.

He feels that it’s the ideal moment to expand into other countries because many crypto-focused businesses are having cash shortages and bankruptcy risks. The crypto market crash has wiped out almost $2 trillion from the overall market value. Currently, the market capitalization is approximately $900 billion, owing to the liquidity crisis, which has forced Three Arrows Capital and Celsius Network to almost shut down. He stated that:

“When we entered U.K. and Europe, this was actually during the last big bear market in 2015–2016.”

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase for comment but has not received a reply as of press time.

While Coinbase is the most well-known cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, it faces fierce competition from newer entrants like Binance, FTX, and Crypto.com. When Binance’s U.S. affiliate announced that it would no longer charge fees for Bitcoin trading, Coinbase’s shares dropped.

Coinbase is working to keep up with its competitors, which are gaining a lot of popularity in other areas of the world. Both Binance and FTX have received licenses in the Middle East. In addition, Binance has obtained licensing in France and Italy and is seeking permissions in additional European nations.

Related: Crypto exchange Binance seeks critical licenses in Philippines, CEO says

While the worldwide technology industry is experiencing layoffs, Coinbase has not been immune. The crisis compelled the firm to reduce almost 18% of its global personnel in June, affecting its personnel in the United Kingdo and Ireland as well.

FINRA may hire employees terminated from crypto firms: Report

“Anybody who is getting laid off from a crypto platform and wants to work for FINRA, give me a call,” said president and CEO Robert Cook.

The United States Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, reportedly plans to “bulk up” its capability to monitor crypto — a move that could include scooping up employees recently terminated from crypto companies.

According to a Tuesday Reuters report, FINRA president and CEO Robert Cook encouraged crypto workers who expect to be on the chopping block to reach out to the financial regulator as part of its efforts to increase resources related to the space. Major crypto exchanges in the United States including Coinbase and Gemini have announced plans to cut staff amid extreme market volatility, likely resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs.

“We are already having to be engaged in the space and we think that as a result it’s appropriate for us to bulk up our capabilities there,” said Cook. “Anybody who is getting laid off from a crypto platform and wants to work for FINRA, give me a call.”

Roughly 3,600 people currently work at FINRA, according to its website. Many firms registered with the financial regulator can trade stocks or crypto on their clients’ behalf. Cook reportedly said FINRA was working on developing digital asset verification techniques as well as cross-market surveillance on some blockchains.

Related: FINRA orders Robinhood to pay $70M due in part to ‘significant harm’ platform caused users

Some crypto firms based outside the U.S. including Crypto.com — headquartered in Singapore — have announced similar staff cuts during the market downturn. CEO Kris Marszalek said on June 10 that the exchange would be letting 260 employees go in an effort to “ensure continued and sustainable growth for the long term.” However, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced on Wednesday that the major crypto exchange had 2000 open positions for which it was hiring.