Is Coinbase Looking to Enter the Margin Trading Market Soon After News of Debit Card Surfaces?

During a recently conducted Youtube AMA, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong spoke at length regarding a number of different topics including the similarities shared by the crypto domain and the internet of the early-90’s.

However, what seemed to grab everybody’s attention was when Armstrong hinted at Coinbase possibly entering the ‘margin trading’ space in the near future.

“The most important thing to understand about the cryptoeconomy is that we’re not simply righting the wrongs of finance 1.0. We’re creating an entirely new way to access financial services.” @brian_armstrong shares his vision for the future of cryptoeconomy from #consensus2019 pic.twitter.com/NOg3XbEt3V

— Coinbase (@coinbase) May 15, 2019

More on the Matter

As part of the above mentioned AMA, a number of Coinbase users repeatedly pressed Armstrong to comment on the subject of margin trading and whether or not his company would enter this niche segment any time soon.

On the issue, he stated that while there was clearly a “lot of demand” for the incorporation of such a feature, his company’s dev team was still looking for a way in which to meet consumer requests while satisfying the “lowest common denominator of today’s regulatory standards”.

Armstrong then went on to add:

“This is one of those products where you have to innovate not just on the technology, but also on the regulatory side.”

In addition to all this, the Coinbase top-man also confirmed that his firm’s native crypto-debit card offering — which is currently available in the UK — will soon be released for interested users in the United States by the end of the year.

However, it should be made clear that an exact release date for the card has not yet been made public.

Lastly, when asked about Coinbase’s fraud prevention program, Armstrong was quoted as saying:

“Unfortunately, there’s people out there who trade in stolen bank accounts and credentials, and they often come and try to use them. That’s why in actually making a fiat-to-crypto exchange, one of the hardest things to do is fraud prevention, in addition to the security and regulation. We put holds up there because we’re waiting to see if we get chargebacks from fraudulent accounts. The fraud rate is something we measure really carefully, because it ever gets out of hand, I mean, it can wipe our entire margin from the fee that we charge for these things.”

He then stated that due to the reversible nature of the above mentioned payment avenues, it was becoming harder for businesses to facilitate these kinds of ‘fiat-to-crypto’ tx’s.

Final Take

In closing out his discussion with his Youtube followers, Armstrong stated that as we move into the future, Coinbase is looking to make use of newer features such as ‘improved price alerts’ that will allow clients to be better aware of market fluctuations and real-time alt-coin price movements. While the price of Bitcoin stays above $7,000 and no one knows what tomorrow brings, one thing is made clear, those who are BUIDLing during these extended bear market times are going to many fruits to bear once the real market momentum continues.