Coinbase has announced it will now be able to list digital assets classed as securities following its acquisition of three licensed companies.
According to a spokesperson, the highly popular fiat-cryptocurrency gateway had its purchases of Keystone Capital Corp, Venovate Marketplace Inc and Digital Wealth LLC approved by both the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The acquisitions allegedly allow Coinbase to use the already in place licenses, instead of having to apply itself. The changes place Coinbase within federal jurisdiction, where previously it was bound to limited state legislation.
According to Bloomberg this move enables Coinbase to operate as a broker dealer, an alternative trading system and a registered investment advisor, which could allow the platform to do business with ICOs.
The change allegedly allows Coinbase to list Security tokens, overcoming the legal stumbling block that had prevented the exchange from listing further digital assets. Currently the platform only allows the trade of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, but last week an announcement was made that work was underway to add Cardano, 0x, Basic Attention Token, ZCash and Stellar. Today’s news may see further coins integrated in the near future.
Security tokens have been defined by legislators as any digital asset that has security like features. These can include a regular dividend, or other incentive to token holders. Cryptocurrency projects have been struggling to escape this classification, with many ICOs barring US investors from involvement to avoid prosecution.
If Coinbase is in fact able to add Security tokens to it would definitely spell good news for the exchange that is growing to dominate the cryptocurrency market. The rapid growth is showing no signs of slowing, and today CEO of Ethereum-based wallet Balance, Richard Burton, predicted that the platform would surpass giants Facebook, Apple and Microsoft in marketcap.
It’s possible that this may come to pass, but rivals Circle and Gemini are also advancing rapidly, while decentralized solutions to the fiat-crypto gateway such as Dether are well underway with attractively low fees.
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