As of today, cryptocurrency traders in the UK have more options. According to a blog post by Coinbase Pro General Manager David Farmer, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is introducing new order book trading pairs for the British pound, and will offer trading for the pound against Bitcoin BCH, along with other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Litecoin.
The new pairs will be rolled out slowly. Each will go through a post-only phase followed by a limit-only phase. After that, complete trading, including stop orders, limit and market, will be made available. Farmer pointed out that the post-only phase will only support the posting of limit orders, but matching the orders will have a delay of at least 10 minutes. Limit orders will start matching after that 10-minute delay, but that phase will also require another ten minutes, at the very least.
Farmer explained, “If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one stage (as identified below) for a longer period of time, or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules.”
Coinbase’s hold on the UK has increase over the past several months. Early in August, the company announced that it had begun to offer direct deposits and withdrawals with pounds using the Faster Payments Scheme. Previously, payments had to be converted from pounds to euros in order to fund accounts. Since the process relied on bank transfers, it would typically take several days for the funding to be complete.
This past March, Coinbase also received an e-money license from the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. That opened the doors for the U.S.-based company to expand into the UK, as well as across Europe.
Back in the U.S. domestic market, Coinbase is said to be considering trying to secure approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer a crypto-based exchange-traded fund (ETF). It has reportedly held a meeting with the blockchain group of BlackRock, a veteran ETF company in the U.S. It’s unclear how productive that meeting is, given comments previously made by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. He said that Bitcoin is nothing more than “an index of money laundering.”
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