Crypto exchange Coinbase is turning towards ‘decentralization’ in future products

Coinbase, among other centralized exchanges, are acknowledging a need for decentralization in the future.

Coinbase shared plans to focus on global and 3^rd party products

According to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Coinbase believes that “our centralized (CeFi) products will continue to play a critical role in the growth of the crypto economy.”

However, Coinbase recognizes that “the decentralized crypto economy will also be a major area of growth” and plans to incorporate this in their product roadmap. They point to NFTs and dApps as examples of rapid growth.

We are embracing decentralization at Coinbase https://t.co/R1Xi3BVniX

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) June 29, 2021

To start the process of decentralization, Coinbase wants to list more assets faster. The exchange which still does not trade many ERC20 tokens and just recently added Solana, wants to remove a focus on risk-adjust decisions to speed up the process.

The company also wants to move from products focused on the US, UK, EU, and Japan and onto the rest of the world. Furthermore, Coinbase wants to build an app store for crypto applications and give their users access to “10s of billions of dollars of economic activity running on dApps.”

Other exchanges are moving to DeFi

BitGo has held the position that although digital assets are focused on decentralization, “ironically, the current markets where we trade digital assets, including Bitcoin, are the most centralized markets in the world.”

Gemini also believes that “with disintermediation as a core philosophy of the blockchain community, decentralized exchanges — or DEXs — have gained in popularity alongside traditional centralized exchanges (CEXs).” Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap have reached a daily volume of around $1 billion while Coinbase is at around $2.5 billion in daily volume. It will be interesting to see how the DEX market grows as more CeFi companies move to DeFi.

Like what you see? Subscribe for updates.