Coinbase Says It Has Green Light to List Coins Deemed Securities

One of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency platforms, Coinbase Inc., is on a mission to become one of the first federally regulated venues for trading digital coins deemed to be securities. The U.S watchdogs have given them the green light to move forward, along with a trio of acquisitions.

On Monday, a spokesman of the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority have approved the request of Coinbase to add securities token and its purchase of Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace Inc., and Digital Wealth LLC. Primarily being regulated by a patchwork of State authorities, Coinbase has used its acquisitions to enable the firm to offer the security tokens, and also to place the business under the oversight of the Federal. Back in June, Coinbase had got the licenses to operate as a broker-dealer, which is an alternative trading system, and a registered investment advisor. These trading systems usually operate outside the traditional public stock exchanges.

Eventually, these regulated trading platforms can handle billions of dollars if Coinbase adds Securities token. In initial coin offerings, the tokens could be sold by different companies. According to the market tracker, CoinSchedule, some companies have already raised more than $12 Billion through ICOs in 2018, despite crackdowns by U.S, China, and many other countries. This was more than triple of what they did in all of last year. The SEC has reported the issuers must register and comply with the federal laws, as most of the coins are securities.

Circle Internet Financial Ltd., one of the biggest competitor of Coinbase, hasn’t left it alone in this race. It is interested in making registration as a brokerage and trading venue with the SEC, mainly to help the investors to buy and sell tokens that are deemed to be security. For more services to their customers, they are also planning to seek a federal banking license.

The next step for Coinbase to add Securities token is to integrate its technology into new subsidiaries, without providing a timeline, as said by its spokesman. This is mainly to make sure that the employees have proper licenses, and also to review how the company reports data and onboard customers.
On Friday, Coinbase was reported saying that it’s looking into letting its users use five more digital coins, namely

• Cardano
• Basic Attention Token
• Stellar
• Zcash
• 0x

However, it isn’t giving a guarantee that it will list the tokens. This move could be a turning point for Coinbase, as currently only lets customers trade Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, and Litecoin. Coinbase has also said that some of these assets will only be available in selected countries for legal purposes.