What crypto winter? A bear market, regulator crackdowns, and falling expectations for cryptocurrencies be damned. Coinbase, the popular US cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service, hasn't looked like it's feeling the chill. It announced late last week that it is looking to potentially add support for 31 new crypto-tokens. Then it followed up on the same day to confirm it would immediately add support for four of them—tokens from Civic, District0x, Loom Network, and Decentraland—to its professional platform. Surprising perhaps, but it makes sense that a company striving to be "the Google of crypto" would be doing all it can to keep the faith alive during the down market.
Coinbase says its goal is to "offer support for all assets that meet our standards and are fully compliant with local law." Okay, but what makes it so confident in these 31 coins? Does it know something we don't about what those local laws might be? Has the SEC assured Coinbase that none of the coins it is exploring violate securities law?
Bizarrely, at least part of Coinbase's continued bullishness may stem from an unusual source: virtual reality. In a new Medium post, CEO Brian Armstrong explains his belief that cryptocurrency will be "widely used" in virtual worlds. "When people transact in virtual worlds, it doesn't make sense to use the currency of one country," he writes. "People from all over the world will gather in these virtual spaces, and it would be exclusionary (or perhaps even rude) to use one country's currency in a digital world." Perhaps, but first they would need those virtual spaces to exist. Unfortunately for Armstrong and Coinbase, we may be in a VR winter too.
Oh, that crypto winter. ConsenSys has confirmed that its shakeup will indeed include layoffs; so far 13 percent of its staff has been let go.
Meanwhile, other startups are also feeling the pain as the value of cryptocurrencies plunges. ECTDEV, which led development of the Ethereum Classic blockchain, recently announced that it is shutting down. SpankChain, an Ethereum-based adult entertainment site that pays performers in cryptocurrency, has downsized from 12 to 8 workers. The CEO of Sirin Labs, which raised $158 million on the promise that it would create a blockchain-focused mobile phone, told Bloomberg that the company is considering abandoning hardware and just selling software. And Chinese crypto-mining leader Bitmain has shuttered its Israel branch, laying off its 23 employees.
And what about all those institutional investors—hedge funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and others—that were supposedly chomping at the bit to invest billions of dollars in the cryptocurrency market? Just a few months ago, the conventional wisdom was that these big players were just waiting for better infrastructure, particularly for storing crypto-assets securely. But a new report from Reuters suggests that they still remain largely absent from cryptocurrency trading, even though infrastructure has now been built by big-name players—most prominently Fidelity Investments, which has launched a new company focused on crypto-asset management. The truth is that the hesitance on the part of the institutions was never just about a lack of infrastructure, but also reflected a general sense of uncertainty about the technology. Crashing coin prices won't help.
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