Coinbase Custody has $1 billion in assets under management (AUM)! Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, said that they reached this benchmark just 12 months after its launch.
Brian Armstrong spoke at Consensus 2019 and was posed the question about the status of institutional involvement in the cryptocurrency industry by Paul Vigna, a Wall Street Journal reporter and panel moderator.
Armstrong replied:
“We launched our custody 12 months ago, we’ve just crossed $1 billion AUM or institutions, 70 institutions have signed up, adding about $150 million AUM a month, so, to a large degree that has been a success”.
Armstrong also remarked that institutions are not just interested in having their funds sitting idle while in custody. “They want to be staking and voting, doing governance on-chain… I think that will grow rapidly”.
Armstrong confirmed that Bitcoin is the main star and point of interest for institutions that use Coinbase Custody, but interest in other cryptocurrencies is growing. To answer that demand, Coinbase offers services for 30 coins for institutions, including staking-as-a-service for some.
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Armstrong both noted that institutions that are currently involved aren’t necessarily the big traditional players most are familiar with. Wilson remarked:
“When people read in the Wall Street Journal that institutions are coming to crypto they think Goldman is coming, but in reality, maybe 100 token funds in the US and 100 in Asia are all in so far.”
Coinbase Pro, Coinbase’s platform for more advanced traders, is seeing an uptick of institutional involvement as well. More than half of its trading volume is coming from said institutions – roughly 60%.
Armstrong plans on taking Coinbase’s custodial process and making it more active. “I would love to be in a world where people could self-custody … and still participate in exchanges, we’re talking to people at StarkWare about that.”
What do you think? We’ve talked about Coinbase’s custodial and cloud storage services before – now it seems like they’re really ramping up their services and products. Let us know what you think on our Facebook page!
