Asiff Hirji, COO and President of Coinbase stated, “Coinbase is focused on growing business with financial institutions like hedge funds, endowments and family offices, rather than serving high-speed traders.”

There are more than 600 employees in Coinbase.  They have reportedly launched a variety of products which will cater to institutional investors through Coinbase Custody and Coinbase Pro.

A Coinbase spokesperson recently stated, “To become the ‘Google of crypto’ we have to be comfortable making big bets. Some of them will be audacious, and some of them won’t work out.”

During the surge times, there were slowdowns and maintenance issues and, the Coinbase markets based in San Francisco designed a module that is 20 times faster than the module that was used in 2017.  This might have caused excessive operational cost. 

The Chicago office that is being shut down in San Francisco was opened in May 2018, and nearly 30 Engineers have been working on the HFT trading modules.  Coinbase will be shutting down its office in Chicago, and nearly all of these 30 employees will be losing jobs.

Coinbase has made a filing with the Federal Election Commission stating that The Political Action Committee (PAC) of Coinbase will be terminated as the Coinbase PAC did not receive any funds nor did it make any disbursements and therefore are seeking to terminate the PAC.

The FEC regulations require that the PAC should file a termination report to cease operations when it no longer intends to receive or make contributions.

PACs in the US are independent organizations, which represent labor, policy interests, and different businesses. They collect and donate money for political campaigns either for or against the ballot initiatives, legislation or candidates.

PACs are not supposed to coordinate directly with the campaigns, which they are focusing on supporting.  There are some cases though where the coordination has occurred.

The PAC of Coinbase was founded in July of the past year.  In September it became the founding member of the blockchain association.  The Association was the first of its kind in Washington D.C. to represent the interest of the blockchain industry exclusively.  There were other members of this group which included Protocol Labs and, Polychain Capital and Digital Currency Group.  The PAC now has to shut down before they even raised a cent.

The Binance Chain Pump is being called the Coinbase effect because of the comparison between the decentralized platforms listings and the past Coinbase listings.