The U.S Cryptocurrency Market Is About To Become More Competitive For Exchanges

There are over 1600 cryptocurrencies in the market right now; and without any doubt, cryptocurrencies have established themselves as a major part of the finance and investment landscapes. The cryptocurrency market is a global market and most of trading news tend to come out of Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. 

 

Nonetheless, the U.S remains one of the biggest cryptocurrency destinations because of its dominance in the global socio-economic and geo-political spheres. When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold; hence, the global cryptocurrency market is always looking to the U.S. for direction. This piece examines how cryptocurrency platforms are trying to outdo each other to build a strong presence in the U.S. cryptocurrency market.

 

 

In April, news broke that Coinbase has initiated discussions with U.S regulators about the possibility of setting up shop as a licensed brokerage firm and electronic trading platform. Coinbase still remains the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world; hence, the move to subject itself to regulatory scrutiny is both surprising and understandable. Coinbase understands that it threads the thin line that separates security tokens from utility tokens. 

 

The decision to become an SEC-regulated brokerage will help Coinbase expand the list of its asset offerings to include cryptocurrencies that the SEC has designated as security tokens. By becoming SEC regulated Coinbase can easily offer more assets beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash. In the words, of Coinbase President Asiff Hirji, “the assets that we do list have all had some amount of regulatory certainty… As soon as there is more regulatory clarity than there currently is you would expect us to start listing more assets.”

 

Binance is the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of volume trades; yet, it is taking a slightly different route from Coinbase to establish market dominance. Binance has built up a reputation as an unassailable, hacker-proof, provably secure, and proactive cryptocurrency exchange. For instance, news broke in March that some people had compromised the user trading APIs on Binance (not Binance itself). After compromising the APIs, they started commandeering user accounts to place and trade cryptocurrency orders. They went as far initiating a pump and dump scheme on a relatively unknown Viacoin and the coin surged almost 300% in a matter of days.

 

However, the fact that they failed to hack Binance itself or leverage the compromised APIs to make withdrawals lends credence to Binance’s security. Binance then went much further to show its competent proactivity by reversing all irregular trades. By the end of the whole fiasco, the hackers weren’t able to make away with any money – in fact, they ironically lost tokens, which Binance graciously donated to its Binance Charity.

 

Earlier this week news broke that eToro, a global investment platform is expanding its business into the U.S market. eToro USA has started a waiting list for people want to trade cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and it plans to launch a cryptocurrency exchange and digital wallet later in the year after securing regulatory approval. However, eToro is looking beyond cryptocurrencies to establish its presence where all the digital forms of all assets can be traded. In the words of Yoni Assia, Co-founder and CEO of eToro, “we believe that in the future all

assets will become digitised… Crypto is the first step on this journey and we are excited to share our plans to launch an exchange and wallet.”

 

eToro is an interesting addition to the U.S. cryptocurrency market because it offers an innovative social trading feature. It’s copy trading feature allows new traders to follow and copy the trade of influential and experienced traders. Copying the trades of market veterans helps to shorten the learning curve between learning how to trade cryptocurrencies and actually trading cryptocurrencies’ profitably.