San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has revealed in a new report its client base has grown to 35 million retail and institutional clients, up from 30 million at the beginning of the year.
According to the cryptocurrency exchange’s mid-year review, first reported on by The Block, Coinbase has seen additional participation among retail traders, while also onboarding new institutional investors. Per the exchange, the crypto investor market has kept on maturing from its “retail and crypto-fund roots,” as now there are “many larger and more conservative institutional investors are allocating for the first time.”
These investors, the report reads, are building direct positions and backing crypto fund managers as part of their alternatives strategy. The exchange added:
We saw a noticeable uptick in our institutional business’s growth in H1 and continued to add leading university endowments, traditional multi-strategy hedge funds, VCs, and large family offices to our roster of clients buying digital assets directly.
The San Francisco-based exchange also said it would move to improve various business lines, including offering clients the ability to trade across several pools of liquidity. The move comes months after Coinbase outbid Binance to acquire crypto broker Tagomi.
Coinbase is also looking to expand its lending capabilities in response to client demand, by scaling its credit programs further across fiat and crypto. In the report, the exchange noted it believes that “eventually, all modern financial services businesses will want to provide their clients with digital assets as the asset class continues to grow and use cases broaden.”
As CryptoGlobe reported, sources familiar with the matter have stated Coinbase is planning to go public via a direct listing, instead of an initial public offering. In a direct listing, no new shares are created, and only existing outstanding shares are sold, with no underwriters being involved.
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