Coinbase Just Partnered With a Token Startup in Bid to Attract Pro Traders

U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase has teamed up with the token-based trading protocol startup Caspian in an effort to boost its offerings aimed at pro traders and financial firms.

Under the deal, Coinbase Pro will integrate Caspian's "full stack" of tools to bring additional trading and portfolio management capabilities, according to a Caspian Medium post published Monday.

Kayvon Pirestani, director of institutional sales at Coinbase, said in the post:

"Customers will be able to take advantage of the best elements of both platforms – accessing Coinbase's extensive historical market data and deep pool of liquidity, and combined with Caspian's suite of seamless trading tools."

More than just a commercial opportunity, the partnership is an opportunity to "move forward the institutional adoption of crypto as a mature, tradable asset class," Pirestani added.

Caspian – which offers what it says is an "institutional grade full-stack crypto trading and risk management platform" – currently connects to 25 crypto trading platforms, including Coinbase, Gemini, Bitfinex, Poloniex, Huobi, OKEx and Binance.

As reported by CoinDesk, Caspian was launched just days ago as a joint venture of Kenetic, a crypto firm based in Hong Kong, and Tora, a trading systems firm that already supplies order execution, portfolio management, risk assessment and compliance services for well-established asset classes. The project has already raised $16 million in funding via a token presale.

The firm said the partnership with Coinbase is part of its strategy to "connect institutional investors and active traders with multiple trading platforms from a single interface."

As part of its aim to bring cryptocurrency to the mainstream of finance, Coinbase also announced in June that it was making moves to become a federally regulated broker-dealer.

The firm indicated at the time it was attempting to acquire several companies – Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace and Digital Wealth LLC, – to ease the process of acquiring a broker-dealer license, an alternative trading system license and a registered investment advisor license.

Once those are in place, the company said it aims to seek approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to offer blockchain-based securities.

Generic trading chart on cellphone image via Shutterstock