The entire crypto community is going through a rough patch. The fall in prices combined with the crackdown by governments has scared away investors. Profits are drying up for companies causing many of them to shut down. Bringing in profits and staying afloat is priority number one. One strategy has been to bring in new customers. This is mostly achieved by increasing accessibility and expanding into new markets. Recently, companies like Binance and Coinbase have gone overdrive to attract new customer-offering services like card payments, fiat to crypto exchange and Paypal withdrawals, all in the hope to attract more customers and profit.
The 12 days of Coinbase
12 days of Coinbase is an event made to mimic 12 days of Christmas, where family and friends give gifts to their loved ones. Each day at noon, Coinbase announces new features, support for new cryptocurrencies, etc. On the 5th day, Coinbase announced it will roll out support for cash withdrawals for its customers via Paypal at zero cost. This new feature will be available immediately to users, although only US customer had access to it at the time of the announcement. The only alternative to this is to use a bank withdrawal which takes time, sometimes a few days, while withdrawals to Paypal is instant. Besides providing a faster withdrawal, the new feature makes it more accessible to people and simplifies the whole process. As of this Tuesday, Coinbase has rolled out this feature to its European customers.
Card transactions
Binance, already the world biggest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, is trying to expand even further. This time with a really smart move, to accept payments in card both to buy and sell crypto in its platform. The Malta-based company expects to attract new customers, especially from Europe, into their platform with the convenience provided by card transaction and the seamless way of doing business on the internet. The company with this move aims to provide its users with speed, low fees, and convenience. Binance is partnering with Simplex, an Israel based financial company to make this possible. Simplex takes care of the banking part of the card transactions. Credit, as well as debit cards of Mastercard and Visa, are accepted by Binance.
European expansion
For most companies in the crypto space, Europe is still a relatively untapped market. Most of the crypto trade happen outside Europe. Europe represents less than 5 percent of the global crypto market even though it has more than 20 percent of the world’s GDP. Access and convenience have been a problem for the European customers and Binance tried to solve this problem by opening Binance Jersey, a fiat to crypto exchange. Up until now, Binance was a p2p crypto-to-crypto exchange. Meanwhile, Coinbase has expanded its option to withdraw funds to Paypal to its European customers. The announcement was made on February 5th via their official blog post. This is an extension of the services offered to its US customers. Residents of EU, as well as the those living in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland (European Free Trade Association countries), will be able to access this new service.
This is a clear trend that has emerged over the last year. Rather than focusing on the short term price, they’ve developed a long term strategy. By developing infrastructure and making crypto accessible to more people, companies are betting that this will lead to mainstream adoption which ultimately will aid in the recovery of the market and above all bring in more profit if all goes to plan. Like every other hurdle that cryptocurrencies have faced, this one will be overcome eventually through innovation and disruptive tech, and the only future where crypto gets relevant is where crypto is mainstream. As long as common people can’t get services by paying using crypto, it will remain a fancy new internet thing in the eyes of the commoners.
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