
Coinbase releases professional trading platform for institutional clients - jv22222
https://prime.coinbase.com
======
lisbakke
They're going to give new tools to institutional traders. Co-location, FIX
market data, lending & margin financing products, professional crypto secure
storage ('coinbase custody') etc. etc. They'll be faster than non-institutions
and have trading options unavailable to the rest of us.

Read this [https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional-
deea317d23a...](https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional-deea317d23af)

Right now, the institutions have to play on a level playing field with us one-
man teams.

This suite of products will give them their pay-to-win advantages to keep us
little guys from being the fastest and best in the market.

I have the fastest bot on GDAX right now, that will only last until these new
services are introduced -- since I can't afford to pay $XXk a month for the
privilege.

Edit: If you're reading this from your chair at a HFT firm, send me a message
if your company is interested in the fastest bot :)

~~~
btown
It’s almost like capital tends to concentrate in the absence of regulated
financial markets or something...

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anfogoat
Two words that perfectly describe financial regulation: accredited investor.
Now, what was that about capital concentration?

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sokoloff
IMO, the SEC accredited investor rules are in place to make it a federal crime
to scam non-accredited investors. Though I tend to be anti-regulation in
general, I think these are good laws as I can only imagine how many investment
scams would be running otherwise.

~~~
CryptoPunk
They make it a federal crime to offer securities to non-wealthy people.
Characterizing all such offers as scams is a prejudicial over-simplification,
and the kind of sweeping and presumptive generalization that rationalizes
repression.

~~~
Veelox
I think you are being uncharitable to the point they made. Since there are
accredited investors, if a bad guy tries to talk an un-accredited investor
into buying into a dressed up Ponzi scheme it is a federal crime and thus can
be investigated and treated as such. The goal of this is to keep main street
investors safe. Yes, it does put some limits on individual freedom but I think
this is one area where the trade-offs has been chosen decently well.

~~~
hndamien
Nothing stops an unaccredited investor betting the farm on Enron. If there is
a less perceived risk, people will use more leverage. So all of this
"protection" just amounts to restricted opportunity.

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sokoloff
Several people went to federal prison and Arthur Anderson went out of business
over the Enron shenanigans. This seems as much a deterrent as the Securites
Act of 1934. If you’re willing to risk federal prison, you can solicit non-
accredited investors for unregistered securities.

~~~
hndamien
You are missing the point. Insert any publicly listed stock that tanked. How
about a nice safe bank, like Lehman brothers?

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RasputinsBro
Coinbase lost this radio show's money and won't take responsibility for it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E7FSs6oXak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E7FSs6oXak)

(I'm not the show host, I just enjoy the show)

~~~
stef25
And I'm locked out of my account for 6 months cause 2FA stopped working and
now they can't verify my ID. The whole thing is a shit show.

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hmate9
The GDAX servers are hosted on AWS. Us-East-1 if i remember correctly. This
allows anyone to have basically free colocation. So not sure why they give
colocation as a selling point here

~~~
joncrane
Would you have to try instances in multiple availability zones until you get
the one with the shortest round trip time?

Surely they load balance across AZs though so results may change...

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rb808
Is there a reason to prefer trading with BTC rather than the futures?

~~~
DINKDINK
One pays a premium for the security of a future, if you don't need that
security, you can buy / sell at a better price.

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rajacombinator
Coinbase is basically nothing and continuing to decline in relevance in the
crypto market. The idea that they’re capable of providing a higher level of
service when they failed miserably at what they do now is amusing.

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dnomad
It's an interesting idea. I guess is an institution is going to take on crypto
exposure they'll need all the trimmings including real-time market data in
order to properly manage their exposure. But beyond the basic risk
management... there's not much actual trading going on, is there? What drives
the need for low latency? The crypto space has fewer assets than the actual
real-currency FOREX market and it's not driven by real economic data, right?
The only real "strategy" is momentum trading, right? It's just not clear what
low-latency is buying you here.

~~~
pmart123
Lower latencies would help any market makers that change bid/offer quotes more
quickly when say the price of bitcoin changes on a different exchange, or the
FX price changes in the quoted base currency.

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fartzzz
I think the good thing about the crypto currency trading world is that
everyone have more or less the same access as everyone else on the current
exchanges (at least on GDAX). It would be great with more exchanges to fill
the gap between the exchanges that wants to be 'traditional' (GDAX) and the
ones who cannot be trusted (Maybe Bitfinex?)

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whydoineedthis
I'm so glad the currency is decentralized so that the existing powers don't
have undue influence over monitary policy and the value of the currency I
hold. Oh....wait...right...greed wins again.

You can distribute the nodes all you want, as long as the currency can be
traded on a financial swap system, it will be nothing more than another
commodity.

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pastor_bob
How about they get rid of wash trading first

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aristocles
Wash trading makes valuating the market on volume alone harder to do and
therefore increases novel activity in the market, making old algo's obsolete
and decreasing risk temporarily until the wash trading strategy is identified
and made unprofitable.

Wash trading did nothing wrong.

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oceanghost
Does anyone trust Coinbase at this point?

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pbreit
I think the vast, vast majority trust it a great deal, perhaps more than any
other crypto property.

So I'm wondering why you would ask such a question?

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jbaudanza
They have developed a reputation for having poor, unresponsive consumer
support. Try doing a twitter search for @coinbasesupport. At any given time,
it's a horror show.

I personally discovered this after a time sensitive transaction took about 48
hours to complete because of a buggy deploy on their end. The only reason it
didn't take longer was because I was able to track down a coinbase support
employee on the bitcoin reddit.

~~~
oceanghost
Same. They accidentally repeated a buy I'd made 5 or so times-- and it took
almost a month for the coins to appear in my account.

I ended up making a couple bucks off the deal. But I can't help but think how
badly it could have gone.

~~~
stephen_gareth
Official Coinbase support is non existent in my experience. There are people
on the Coinbase Reddit page
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/) who
seem to be able to move things along if you aren't getting any support from
Coinbase.

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whydoineedthis
public service announcement: use square's app to move your fiat to bitcoin
instead. Works way faster than coinbase.

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whistlerbrk
What does this mean for Gemini?

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otoburb
I think Gemini was the first in NY to launch institutional features back in
late 2016[1], including the hallowed custodial service. My understanding is
that without a qualified custodian[2][3], hedge funds with assets under
management greater than $150M were unable to invest in said securities because
they need(ed) a qualified custodian beyond this limit.

[1] [https://medium.com/gemini/gemini-licensed-custodial-
services...](https://medium.com/gemini/gemini-licensed-custodial-
services-c4f2658d7469)

[2]
[https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ia-2176.htm](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ia-2176.htm)

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-
funds/l...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-funds/lack-
of-wall-st-back-office-deters-mainstream-crypto-investments-idUSKBN1I91WF)

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Alex3917
Institutional accounts have already existed on Coinbase for a long time. Maybe
the splash page is new?

~~~
lisbakke
No. Read this [https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional-
deea317d23a...](https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional-deea317d23af)

They are getting lower latency, secure storage and new trading products --
only available to Institutions.

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45h34jh53k4j
Hyperbitcoinization incoming!

In all seriousness, the attention from institutions, growing maturity of
custodial solutions and good monetary policy are colliding. Nocoiners, watch
out!

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subcosmos
Coming soon, CDOs (Coin-Debt-Obligations)!

~~~
jamespedwards
[https://dai.makerdao.com/](https://dai.makerdao.com/)

