Coinbase Shifting Focus Due to Growing Institutional Investor Interest in Crypto

America's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, is shifting its focus to serve the needs of a growing interest in crypto by institutional investors.

Firstly, news broke last week that Coinbase had filed to close its Political Action Committee with the American Federal Election Commission.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase for official comment on both matters and the company has confirmed that it is carrying out some changes to its business focus.

Coinbase set up its PAC in July 2018 and subsequently became a founding member of the Blockchain Association in September.

In a reply to Cointelegraph, Coinbase Director of Communications Elliott Suthers would not divulge why the company had initially setup the PAC nor the main reason why it has now decided to shut down the group less than a year after it was initially created.

Recently, Coinbase also closed its Chicago office as part of scaledown of its high-frequency trade matching engine.

It is understood that Coinbase is dialling down its focus on high-frequency trading as it looks to develop new product offerings.

Coinbase has built up a broad spectrum of institutional customers, ranging from asset issuers and crypto funds to university endowments and pension funds at the other end of the scale.

Coinbase Pro now has 44 actively traded order books and has users across 53 countries at the moment.

The comments from Coinbase come at an interesting juncture following the news of a meeting in January that was attended by the heads of top cryptocurrency exchanges around the world.