Coinbase, Huobi: Crypto exchange shake-up as bear market bites

Its all happening in the crypto exchange world.

Coinbase is pivoting to Asia, having just announced that it is setting up an OTC operation and custody operation out East. Coinbase and other western exchanges have been missing a trick by not trying to break into the Asian market, which is still the beating heart of the crypto market.

The new service is available to Coinbase Pro and Prime customers and also includes cross-border payments with inbound and outbound SWIFT transfers.

Full details are in the Coinbase blog post yesterday.

Huobi cash problems?

Exchanges are being squeezed by the bear market and are clearly looking for ways to find more customers from constricted trading volumes.

And China's Huobi exchange seems to be having its troubles, and that don't seem to mind telling the world.

This from the South China Morning Post:

“We do not know how long the bear market will last, so it is still possible that we will struggle to survive,” Weng said in an interview at his Beijing office. “We have to plan in advance and spend money carefully.”

Huobi moved its exchange business to Singapore following the banning of crypto trading by China in 2017. Despite that 70% of the exchange's customers are Chinese. According to SCMP they are either Chinese people living abroad or are using a VPN service from behind the Great Firewall of China.

Binance has also announced that it is getting into the whale and institutional field. It has also launched its own over-the-counter service.

Bithumb IPO

And yet more exchange news sees South Korean trading venue Bithumb seek a listing on US equity markets through a reverse IPO in which it merges with Blockchain Industries Inc via the Bithumb holding company BTHMB Holdings, based in Singapore. The news emerged after a letter of intent between the companies was revealed in an announcement.

In somewhat related news Caspian, the full stack, institutional-grade crypto trading technology platform, has been selected by AK Jensen’s Crypto arm offering fund managers access to a legal, regulatory and operational solution to trade in crypto assets. AK Jensen has asset under management of $18 billion.

On the wild side, crypto twitter has been on fire contemplating that fact that John McAfee is on the run. The US Inland Revenue Service is after him. Crypto watchers will not be too surprised by the news given his boasts about paying no tax for eight years. He was asking for trouble and now he's got it:

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1087772979730239490

In other news, in a panel discussion on blockchain technology one of the participants reckoned that the priace of botcoin woud eventually go to zero.

"I do believe it will go to zero. I think it's a great technology but I don't believe it's a currency. It's not based on anything," said Jeff Schumacher, founder of BCG Digital Ventures.

Glenn Hutchins, the chairman of blockchain-focused company Long Island, said that BTC would more likely be a store of value.

"It might be that the role of bitcoin in the system could be to bring value back, to hold your value there while you have tokens that have other use cases that you aren't using at the moment."

Watch the discussion below:

Bitcoin’s environmental impact tells you it won’t be currency of the future, digital expert says from CNBC.

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