Tale of Two Crypto Exchanges, Binance in regulatory winter; Coinbase springing change

Coinbase ($COIN), the Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange announced the expansion of its international institutional payment services earlier today. Global institutional clients were able to deposit only native fiat currencies, but starting today all institutional clients would have access to USD, EUR, or GBP and related trading pairs.  The exchange said it is committed to ensuring the best onboarding support for its clients and revealed the recent expansion is based on continuous demand.

The official blog post read,

This expansion of supported currencies has been a top request from international clients and has the potential to unlock billions of dollars in trading volume through improved access to major pools of liquidity. Institutional customers will now be able to trade in and out of various currencies regardless of where they are based. This is an important step in Coinbase’s journey towards creating a global trading platform.

Coinbase has continued its international expansion over the past few weeks through regulatory headway in Germany and Japan. The exchange was first approved by Japan’s FSA to debut in the Japanese crypto market and just a few days later it also became the first crypto exchange to get a crypto custody license from German top regulator Basin.

Coinbase Continues To Expand While Binance Faces Regulatory Woes

The New-York based exchange’s progress over the past month is in quite a contrast to its competitor Binance, which has faced regulatory snubs in four countries over the past week.

Binance has faced regulatory troubles in Japan, UK, Cayman Islands, and the most recent Thailand SEC over the past week. Japan and Cayman Islands issued a warning to the exchange for operating without the necessary license, while the UK issued a non-compliance warning and the Thai SEC has initiated criminal proceedings for operating without the license.

The absence of a physical headquarters has been one of the key reasons of concern for the regulators, while Binance maintains the decentralized nature of its business is the main reason for having no particular country of origin.