Coinbase's international arm adds spot trading for non-US institutions

Coinbase's plan to grow its customer base outside the U.S. is taking another step this week by allowing non-U.S. institutions to use its cryptocurrency exchange for spot trading, it announced on Wednesday.

As of Dec. 14, the U.S.-based Coinbase will list "BTC-USDC and ETH-USDC pairs via API access for non-US institutional clients only," the company said in a blog post.

Coinbase's international arm, which began offering derivatives trading to non-U.S. institutional clients earlier this year, said it will also, in the coming months, both begin servicing retail customers more comprehensively while adding additional digital assets to the platform. 

Going Abroad

Since launching its international arm, Coinbase has rolled out perpetual futures trading for non-U.S. institutions and "eligible" retail users. In the third quarter, Coinbase said it onboarded more than 100 institutions "with approximately $10 billion in perpetual futures trading volume," according to the blog post.

The exchange's "Go Abroad, Go Deep" plan to expand internationally has partly been spurred by its ongoing entanglements with U.S. regulators. It has said its strategy involves focusing on 24 countries, including Brazil, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.