Institutional investor interest in the cryptocurrency space is becoming more widespread and is helping to drive the market, according to the vice president and general manager of Coinbase.
Adam White was speaking to CNBC’s ‘Fast Money[1]‘ yesterday when he made his comments. According to him, what’s interesting about this is the fact that retail investors were initially driving the industry. However, throughout 2017 the San Francisco-based crypto exchange saw increasing interest from institutional investors to the market, he added.
“[The] institutional conversations have become more and more profound,” White said.
Last Friday, Coinbase revealed that it was “exploring” the addition of five altcoins to the platform. However, in a blog post[2], the exchange added a caveat:
“…these assets will require additional exploratory work and we cannot guarantee they will be listed for trading. Furthermore, our listing process may result in some of these assets being listed solely for customers to buy and sell, without the ability to send or receive using a local wallet.”
The five coins it is considering are Cardano[3] (ADA), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Stellar Lumens[4] (XLM), Zcash[5] (ZEC), and 0x (ZRX). At present, Coinbase lists Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and BCH
“We have a long-term vision for the space,” White said. “And we are focused on building the exchange, the wallet, the custodian, that allows capital to move into the space.”
This is just one of the many changes that have been reported on at the exchange in the first seven months of 2018. In March, the company announced[6] that it was intending to add support for the ERC20 technical standard.
This was followed up with the news that the company was rebranding its GDAX platform to Coinbase Pro[7]. Specifically
