Coinbase built the platform, Coinbase Custody, to serve investors like hedge funds and family offices; "We are designing Coinbase Custody to meet the needs of institutional clients," Armstrong said in a Medium post as reported by Business Insider; the features include account representatives and support, multi-user accounts and insurance in some cases. Source.
San Francisco-based Coinbase has received approval for digital currency trading of Ether and Litecoin in New York; the company was also granted approval for a debit card service called Shift Card; with the approval, Maria Vullo and the the New York State Department of Financial Services reiterated their position on the OCC's fintech charter, noting the importance for state fintech oversight. Source
Coinbase and affiliates have taken the lead on introducing a legal framework for blockchain tokens as a security; on Wednesday they released a 27-page framework for regulation and best practices for blockchain tokens; paper provides a risk score measurement, best practices for token sales and a detailed securities law analysis. Source
The acquisition of Lawnmower comes at a time when CoinDesk has been expanding their research division, this will only help to enhance that strategy; Ryan Selkis, CoinDesk's managing director said, "The tools and expertise the Lawnmower team has built over the past two years will accelerate the growth of our new research division, and add critical depth to our product team."; Lawnmower first launched in April of 2015 with their micro-investment application for bitcoin's retail investor, from there they built out a research and analysis team to produce insight into digital currencies; "We're thoroughly excited to come onboard and help shape the future of digital currency," said Pieter Gorsira, co-founder and CEO of Lawnmower. Source
CoinDesk has created a list of the top 5 analysts and top 5 traders; CoinDesk considered Twitter followers, published analysis, charts produced, industry experience, incumbent financial industry experience and votes from the Blockchain Q3 Sentiment survey. Source
Coinbase was ordered to hand over information on customers who made transactions over $20,000 between 2013 and 2015; the IRS believes people have not been correctly reporting income made from trades; the information required by the IRS was significantly less than they originally tried to get back when the IRS initially summoned records a year ago; Coinbase might still challenge the order. Source.
Bitcoin market exchange CoinBase has received licensing from the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) to expand its business to New York; the bitcoin licensing process involved analysis of the company's anti-money laundering, capitalization, consumer protection and cyber security policies; along with CoinBase, the New York DFS approved four additional firms for virtual currency business operations including licenses for XRP II and Circle Internet Financial, and charters for Gemini Trust Company and itBit Trust Company. Source
Coinbase has been the top cryptocurrency exchange for the US market as it’s process makes signing up and buying bitcoin simple; they have seen accounts jump from 5.5 million to more than 13 million in less than a year; their success has not been without growing pains with a number of outages occurring and customers lodging complaints that no one was available to help them; recently they also came to an agreement with the IRS to hand over records of customers involving more than $20,000 which was a compromise from a year long battle. Source.
In its Q3 2016 State of Blockchain report, CoinDesk provides insights on blockchain; says blockchain investment is decreasing however significant development efforts continue to occur primarily from major banks and stock exchanges; report also says interest in blockchain from central banks is likely to continue. Source
CoinTribe is using advanced credit modeling to provide online lending to small and medium-sized businesses in India; it also offers personal loans; its services are leading the marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses; company provides an online marketplace for loans and also offers platform as a service digital technology to banks; CoinTribe has been originating loans since March 2016; has raised $3 million in funding and has plans to raise another $10 million to $15 million in the near-term. Source