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Cointelegraph Consulting: Research outlines how DeFi can merge with traditional finance

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Whilst public adoption of crypto assets is increasing, the global regulations continue to progress and recognise decentralized technologies as a suitable infrastructure for the dematerialisation of securities. In Luxembourg, the country that is second in the world in terms of assets under management, the country’s regulator adopted a bill that explicitly recognised the possibility of using distributed ledger technology for the dematerialisation of securities. 

The regulation is moving quickly elsewhere across Europe: Tokenized securities now fall under the same rules and regulations as traditional financial instruments in many other European countries including France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the UK.

Read the ebook to discover how you can be part of this emerging digital asset industry. Download the full report here.

What next for the industry? Due to the increase in public adoption and the favourable regulatory environment, demand from the financial industry to access digital networks is on the rise. So far, banks have digitized the retail industry but not much has evolved in capital markets.

The digitization of this industry is now possible through the blockchain, an infrastructure now widely recognized by the largest governments globally for financial instruments. Funds and asset managers can now upgrade their distribution channels by launching Digital Asset Marketplace (DAM) and connecting to others via decentralized networks.

DAMs will help their customers discover new opportunities, manage their investments and even open secondary market possibilities. In this ebook, industry participants explain how capital market players can benefit from blockchain by launching a DAM and maximizing the monetization of their investor base.

Financial institutions are beginning to publicly embrace and adopt the technology. So far they have started, as expected, with crypto-assets. Once they begin to trust the technology and it becomes embedded within their portfolios, it will mean one thing: curiosity will peak and these institutions will realise the operational benefits of decentralized technology.

Driven by increased confidence in the technology, and pressured by DeFi replacing many traditional banking functions, institutions will begin to learn that the technology can solve long-standing and deeply entrenched industry problems, particularly in the opaque and highly illiquid private markets.

Digital Asset Marketplaces, i.e. primary and secondary venues where investors meet, will be the driver for this according to the study. However, open source standards like the Token for Regulated EXchanges (T-REX), are required to enforce compliance onchain in a heavily regulated world.

Cointelegraph Consulting: Research outlines how DeFi can merge with traditional finance

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Soccer fan tokens on the march as Poland’s biggest club adopts crypto

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The spread of blockchain-based soccer fan tokens across Europe continued on Feb. 22, as Poland’s most successful soccer club partnered with sports fintech firm, Chiliz.

Legia Warsaw, which holds the record for the most number of Polish league championship wins, will launch a token on the fan engagement and rewards platform, Socios.

The $LEG fan token is expected to launch in the coming months and will grant supporters voting rights on various club decisions. Token holders will also be eligible to take part in exclusive games, competitions and VIP experiences. The supply of $LEG fan tokens will be capped at five million.

Legia Warsaw joins 21 European footballing giants to have created fan tokens on the Socios platform recently. Major soccer institutions such as Lionel Messi’s F.C Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s AC Milan have all launched club-based fan tokens on the Chiliz blockchain.

CEO of Legia Warsaw Dariusz Mioduski appeared optimistic about interacting with the new technology offered up by blockchain and tokenization.

“Pioneering solutions and new technologies, which additionally give our fans unique opportunities to actively participate in the life of our club, are the exact direction in which we want to develop,” said Mioduski, adding, “We believe that the potential of the most popular sports brand in this part of Europe, which Legia Warsaw undoubtedly is, will allow Socios.com to gain many fans not only in Poland, but also in the international arena.”

The CEO and founder of Socios.com and Chiliz, Alexandre Dreyfus, welcomed Legia Warsaw onto the Socios platform and anticipated it would increase overall fan engagement.

“Very soon Legia fans all around the world will have a new way to get closer to the club they love and will be able to influence the team in polls, access VIP rewards, exclusive promotions, chat forums and much more on Socios.com,” Dreyfus said, adding, “We’re sure $LEG Fan Tokens will be a massive hit with fans and become a very powerful new engagement tool for the club.”

Soccer fan tokens on the march as Poland’s biggest club adopts crypto

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The year 2021 will bring DeFi into adolescence

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Following the explosive growth of decentralized finance in the second half of 2020, we’re asking ourselves what the next chapter will look like. What would it take for DeFi to expand beyond crypto-native assets and communities and start eating financial services as we know it?

The second half of 2020 surpassed many of our expectations, and the market has only accelerated since then. Total value locked in DeFi rose from less than $1 billion at the start of June to $13 billion at the end of the year and over $27 billion since then. Catalyzed by Compound’s COMP token launch, we saw a wave of yield farming and a rapid inflow of assets.

Related: Was 2020 a ‘DeFi year,’ and what is expected from the sector in 2021? Experts answer

Perhaps more excitingly, we’ve started to see the foundations of a new financial system taking shape — with applications that enable everything from self-custodial exchanges to lending and borrowing, payments, portfolio management and insurance. New forms of value are being created: not just the promise of yield in a low-rate environment but also access to financial services for crypto-exposed businesses and individuals and for the underbanked more generally.

Today, DeFi is the preserve of a small subset of crypto-native users and assets and is seen by its critics as the wild west. Will this change? Here are a few thoughts on what comes next.

New asset types — New sources of liquidity in DeFi

The first iterations of decentralized exchanges were fraught with liquidity issues. Early adopters faced a significant lag in order matching, and token pairs were limited. Automated market makers and liquidity pools have become a widespread solution to this, with daily trading volumes on decentralized exchanges currently on the order of $2 billion — and DeFi projects continue to find innovative ways to incentivize the provision of liquidity. This will continue. For borrowers, we believe there remains a clear need to bring down collateralization requirements and indeed to use alternative forms of collateral.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity lies outside the universe of crypto-native assets. There are trillions of dollars of potential collateral up for grabs in real-world assets: Users want to borrow money against the assets that they already have and often cannot access the liquidity they need by conventional means. Tokenization of real-world assets can dramatically increase the size of the DeFi universe.

Scaling issues addressed at layer one and/or layer two

Ethereum’s scalability constraints are often cited as a factor limiting the adoption of DeFi. High gas prices and indeed high Ether (ETH) prices can render lower-value transactions unviable. This limits the attractiveness of nonfungible token marketplaces and other retail-focused services. Meanwhile, high-frequency professional trading requires layer-two solutions due to limited on-chain transaction throughput.

Related: Second layers will save the day in 2021, bolstering Ethereum and DeFi

It’s plausible that we’ll see this resolved in 2021, with at least three possible paths:

  • The successful rollout of Ethereum 2.0.
  • The emergence of dominant layer-two scaling solutions on Ethereum.
  • Widespread adoption of cross-chain interoperability solutions.

These three phenomena need not be mutually exclusive, and they collectively give us optimism that 2021 will be a year of significant progress on DeFi scalability.

Institutional demand — Convergence between CeFi and DeFi

We are beginning to see crypto-native institutional investors seek higher yields via stablecoins. Many of these investors use centralized exchanges, at least initially, but a handful of institutional-focused self-custodial products has emerged. Regulatory scrutiny on DeFi is likely to increase as these services gain traction.

Meanwhile, regulators around the world have enacted stricter rules for virtual account service providers, such as centralized crypto exchanges. The Financial Action Task Force’s travel rule and Europe’s 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive demonstrate the movement toward stricter Know Your Customer standards in cryptocurrency, and October’s BitMEX charges brought this into sharp relief. This will ultimately touch DeFi: In the near term, we expect to see institutional products implementing pseudonymous/zero-knowledge solutions for self-sovereign identity.

There are ideological and practical questions that need to be addressed. Is KYC fundamentally incompatible with DeFi? And which regulatory frameworks actually apply to DeFi today and in the future? Trustlessness will be defined subjectively, and we’ll see a spectrum from truly decentralized products — built and used by anonymous users outside the purview of the Bank Secrecy Act — to products with a database of verified counterparties.

Better UXs for retail participants: DeFi that doesn’t feel like DeFi

For many users, the on-ramp into DeFi is simply too steep. A certain degree of sophistication is needed simply to set up a MetaMask wallet, buy ERC-20 tokens, and start lending. Meanwhile, many centralized products have grown thanks to intuitive interfaces resembling traditional digital banking products. We are now starting to see this trend play out in DeFi where one could ultimately enjoy a faster, cleaner onboarding experience, given the lack of KYC. As a good example, Yearn.finance was a pioneer in this regard, focusing on usability and lowering the barriers to entry that existed before its launch.

Adjacently, other Ethereum-based applications — such as NFT marketplaces for collectibles and digital assets — will continue to innovate the user experience. In 2021, we expect to see a wider emergence of Ethereum-based applications where customers do not know they are transacting on a blockchain at all.

More exploits as more capital flows in: Potentially the biggest constraint to growth

Given the increasing amount of capital at stake, it’s unsurprising that we have seen a rise in exploits. In 2020, approximately $100 million was lost in hacks, notably flash loan attacks, and this trend is likely to continue. For institutional investors, exploits will inevitably alter the perception of DeFi’s risk-adjusted yield opportunities.

Related: Roundup of crypto hacks, exploits and heists in 2020

This will be a critical factor influencing the scale of adoption and will bring a rise in demand for smart contract auditing and insurance, both of which have seen limited investments to date. Greater collaboration between DeFi projects is also a potential response to the rise in exploits. Such partnerships will allow projects to pool and strengthen their talent, security and treasuries, helping to prevent and mitigate the impact of future exploits.

The rise of crypto in the last decade has transformed the way we think about stores of value. The rise of DeFi in 2020 transformed the way we think about the future of financial services and true innovation in a space that changes very slowly. As the dust settles on a remarkable 2020, we now expect to see a massive increase in scale and professionalization as DeFi captures more regulatory and institutional attention.

This article was co-authored by Toby Coppel and Chandar Lal.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Toby Coppel is a co-founder and partner of Mosaic Ventures, which invested in various projects across Europe. The Future of Money is one of their core investment themes. Toby was previously the chief strategy officer of Yahoo.

Chandar Lal is a research associate at Mosaic Ventures, where he conducts thematic research and due diligence. He previously worked at Sequoia in Silicon Valley as part of the corporate development team.

The year 2021 will bring DeFi into adolescence

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Crypto and blockchain: What the Brazilian market can expect for 2021

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2020 will be remembered as one of the most difficult years for contemporary societies: Countries and entire populations have faced lockdowns and economic crises, financial markets still suffer from the severe impacts of the economic recession, and more than 2 million lives have been taken by COVID-19.

Despite this, other sectors have been impacted in other ways during the severe global health crisis — which still seems far from over, even though vaccines are beginning to be distributed in wealthy countries. Economies have radically digitalized, hedge assets have attracted mistrust, and the crypto market has had one of its most important years since 2009, the year of Bitcoin’s (BTC) launch.

In fact, the crypto and blockchain markets have stood out in the face of a crisis that has spared almost no sector. Cryptocurrency funds are among the most profitable of the year, Bitcoin and the biggest altcoins reach new historic highs, large institutions and investors in the financial markets have allocated investments in Bitcoin, and blockchain technology has broken down barriers in the financial sector and in the production chains of the most varied of sectors.

Faced with a year of profound changes, what is to be expected for the future? Cointelegraph Brasil invited some of the country’s top crypto and blockchain experts to chart the next steps for the market.

Institutional investment

Institutional investment was highlighted in 2020, finally reaching the cryptosphere, and it promises another year of growth in 2021.

According to Rodrigo Borges, founding member of the Oxford Blockchain Foundation, large Bitcoin contributions by institutional investors — which have even bought more BTC than the production capacity of miners — will intensify in 2021: “Regarding Bitcoin, I imagine that there will be an increase in demand for institutional investors, enabling the emergence of new products with exposure to Bitcoin,” analyzed Borges. He also sees “2021 as a year of consolidation and strong development in the sector.”

As for Tatiana Revoredo, MIT blockchain expert and Cointelegraph Brasil columnist, the custody of cryptocurrencies by traditional financial institutions and the adoption of stablecoins will be key in the new year:

“In the financial sector, we will see applications for custody of crypto assets being launched in Brazil, with the possible participation of the traditional market. And if the regulatory authorities allow it, stablecoins will have an expressive role in the Brazilian market, with the turnover being able to quadruple in size.”

Crypto markets

Crypto markets experienced a year of extreme optimism — or greed, as demonstrated by the Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Bitcoin reached a dramatic bottom close at $3,800 in March, and it beat its 2017 historic high of $20,000 on Dec. 16. In Brazil, the currency set a new historical record in November when it reached $106,000 Brazillian reals.

Cointelegraph Markets reporter Marcel Pechman highlighted the behavior of the market despite the setbacks suffered during the year. He recalled: “The Bitcoin and Ethereum markets developed in 2020 as never before imagined, both in terms of trading volume, price and the contribution of renowned investors like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller.”

Pechman said that despite the crypto market suffering some setbacks, the impact of those setbacks on market performance was not so significant: “We had, for example, the US Department of Justice suing BitMEX — at the time, the largest derivatives exchange — and KuCoin’s $280 million hack, and none of those affected the market.”

Pechman also recalled that the 2020 DeFi race led to expensive transaction costs on the Ethereum network but did not impact market sentiment.

OriginalMy CEO Edilson Osório agreed with the promising future of the DeFi sector, but he cautioned against fraud:

“This is an experimental and very promising market, but it must be given extra attention because of malicious groups applying scams and fraud in general. As it is a very new market, platforms may have problems with hacks, and due to the great centralization that exists (even with many platforms presenting themselves as decentralized), there is still a risk of exit scams.”

About 2020’s innovations, and the digitalization imposed by the COVID-19 crisis, Pechman also said that it will go even deeper in 2021:

“Successive innovations, which include Taproot, Schnorr and Lightning Network in Bitcoin, in addition to the launch of Ethereum 2.0 phase 0, pave the way for the next wave, with increasingly larger, scalable applications, and interconnected with traditional finance. The final proof? Fidelity offers loans covered in cryptocurrencies.”

On the domestic markets, Osório is betting on the tokenization market in Brazil, which is already used by the country’s largest crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin. According to him, 2021 will be a year for “maturing the security tokens market.”

“Existing protocols are beginning to be well regarded by regulators, since most of them provide for greater participation and visibility on the part of the regulator itself and allow the mitigation of various risks inherent in this market. In this race, there is a great chance that Brazil will gain prominence because the local regulator has established a regulatory sandbox and the first projects are already beginning to mobilize to have their applications running in a more legally secure environment,” – noted Osório.

Another player at the Brazilian crypto markets, João Paulo Mayall — head of operations at QR Asset Management — is also optimistic about the tokenization market in 2021. He highlighted the role of regulators in the sector’s expansion in the South American country: “I believe that the future is the tokenization of assets, debentures, court bonds, government debts. Brazil is very advanced in its banking system and we will have many surprises in this sector, so I am very optimistic. Tokenization is a billion-dollar market, but it lacks the infrastructure. Innovation came in front of the regulators, but I think they are open to listening and working on it. I think [the regulation] will happen next year, even before March 2021.”

Finally, blockchain expert Tatiana Revoredo argued that crypto adoption in Brazil, which saw its currency melt in 2020, will intensify, with Bitcoin once again asserting itself as an economic-protection asset. She believes that the crypto markets will see “an increase in the interest of Brazilians, with consequent increase in the Brazilian market, with a prominent role for Bitcoin being adopted as a protective asset.”

CBDCs and national governments

The digitization of economies has placed the discussion of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, at the center of debates by financial authorities around the world. One of the countries that has definitely entered this race is China, which is already conducting real tests of the digital yuan in the country. Its main geopolitical rival, the U.S., announced that for the time being, it does not intend to digitize the dollar, but it is already seeing internal pressure from not following the Chinese leadership in the sector.

The Central Bank of Brazil has also commented on the transformation of the Brazillian real into a digital currency a few times, although there are no concrete plans for that in the short term.

Osório believes the European Union will join the hype soon, further accelerating the global race for CBDCs: “Although China appears to be leading the CBDC race, other countries are also beginning to move in this direction. Among them, Estonia, which recently started an internal consultation for the launch of its currency in the digital version. In particular, I believe that in Europe a more comprehensive and organized movement should take place in this sense, given the incentives promoted by the European Union.”

Many experts try to predict the impacts of CBDCs on economies — one of the main concerns of economic regulators. Governments, which largely study the adoption of blockchain in their public processes, should also enter the debate on privacy and the digitization of money.

According to Tatiana Revoredo, “in the government sector, the forecast is for the growth of [blockchain] applications in document registration and health applications, as well as a greater concern, by the citizens, regarding the relationship between privacy and CBDC.” She also claims that payments processors should closely monitor this innovation:

“Those who should be more attentive to these movements are the means of payment, such as PayPal and their peers. They will have to look deeply into their business models as soon as governments start issuing their currencies digitally. ”

Blockchain adoption

Governments have also viewed blockchain technology through a positive lens. In Brazil and Latin America, several state entities already use the technology to certify documents, including customs and notary offices. Big companies are also adopting blockchain to certify production, with use cases that are only expected to grow going forward.

Borges said that the acceleration of blockchain adoption by large companies and governments can positively impact crypto assets:

“Within the scope of blockchain technology, I see the development of interesting solutions, with the increasing involvement of traditional players, especially in the financial and agribusiness sectors, which may result in increased liquidity for certain assets.”

Revoredo agreed and highlighted the advancement of technology in the agricultural sector: “There has been a significant advance in agribusiness, with use in the identification of devices (drones, for example), integration with IoT and artificial intelligence to provide greater reliability and certify quality of agricultural production.”

Osório defended the growth of the blockchain market in 2020 and its prospects for the near future: “When we look at advances in blockchain with applications beyond digital currency, we see a growing market in the area of ​​decentralized digital identity, including with the approach of governments. We have seen movements in governments in the US and Japan, interested in modernizing their digital governance models. And the pandemic has certainly helped to accelerate and advance discussions on the issue around the world, as it understands that the digitization of analog and traditional services is a necessity.”

The end of 2020 was a milestone that closed out one of the most dramatic years in the history of contemporary societies, but it also revealed ways to combat global economic and health crises.

Blockchain technology has helped societies fight corruption, adopt more transparent processes and even contributed to the certification of medicines and vaccines during the most serious health crisis of the last 100 years, in addition to helping companies to improve procedures, products and services.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has strengthened as an economic protection and investment product, has attracted institutional investment giants, and — together with other crypto technologies — has even laid the foundation for central banks around the world to start implementing their own digital currencies.

We still do not know the depth of the revolution we are experiencing with the digitalization of societies and the weakening of national currencies around the world, but by the end of 2021, we will certainly know many of the answers to the questions that still plague us at the beginning of this new year.

Crypto and blockchain: What the Brazilian market can expect for 2021

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Law Decoded: Police and thieves on their screens, Oct 2–9

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Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law.

Editor’s note

Historians typically date the birth of international policing as we know it today to the 1800s, a response to the explosion in nationalist movements and non-governmental political radicalism in Europe. Just as new linking technologies like the telegraph and the steam engine aided and abetted new networks of political deplorables and any number of Sherlock Holmes plots, the explosion of communications tech of the last quarter-century has brought about new forms of crime. 

Which is, y’know, something everyone passively knows. In crypto, association with crime is a familiar reputational issue that is present but certainly not unique. New technology giveth and taketh away. Law enforcement’s interest in controlling new networks also grows. Paranational organizations like drug cartels and terrorist cells come to mind.

This week saw the U.S. Department of Justice press criminal charges against ISIS agents behind American deaths including James Foley’s, a move that expands their power to prosecute foreign agents as criminals under U.S. law. The FBI also busted up a home-grown far-right conspiracy to kidnap the governor of my home state of Michigan. In crypto, several jurisdictions have laid claim to new authority, with the DoJ in particular making a number of moves to expand its jurisdiction.

DoJ vs. everybody

The Justice Department’s new “Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework” laid claim to a whole host of powers over crypto businesses that had previously been in limbo. Most notable is the generosity of what the DoJ is calling its own jurisdiction — basically anything that touches a U.S. server.

The new framework heralds a new era in the department’s crypto authority, but it’s just the clearest summary of a growing body of precedent that U.S. regulators from the SEC to the IRS have been building out for years.

The DoJ’s criminal charges against Seychelles-registered BitMEX’s leadership last week in some ways telegraphed their particular interest in combatting crime in crypto wherever in the world it may be. Most earlier involvement in crypto-linked prosecutions abroad had been focused on networks the DoJ saw as being primarily designed to finance terrorism or funnel money to sanctioned individuals. While the DoJ accused BitMEX of being a means for such action, the allegations against the leadership are not really accusing them of ideological or political illegality, but rather old-fashioned greed.

Distressing for the crypto community is, as always, the association with criminal activity. The DoJ’s report pays lip service to blockchain technology’s ability to revolutionize payments, finance, international trade, shipping, trust, consensus et al — I assume that this readership is familiar with the myriad use cases — but the report pivots compulsively to crime. From the DoJ’s side of things, that is their trade, so it makes sense, but it also adds to the unfair stigma against a technology.

Another cause for concern is that tech-savvy people in the U.S. can get around the barriers by really any crypto company, given enough time and potential profit. So as with the general trends of the last year, U.S. authorities really do seem to be building out the legal framework to give themselves jurisdiction over crypto basically anywhere. World Police indeed.

UK shuts door on whole genre of crypto investment

The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority nixed trading of crypto-based derivatives — including futures, options and swaps — for all retail investors starting in January.

While the FCA may not be as globally hawkish on crypto as its U.S. analogues, London remains Europe’s financial center. Much like Brexit itself, the predicted exodus from London has seen delays that seem to mock all bold predictions.

With its focus on retail investors, however, the FCA has obviously designed its new ban to be more of a protective maneuver for regular Britons rather than a handicap on the reigning heavyweight champs of the London Stock Exchange.

Nonetheless, as the UK’s position within both Europe and the global economy is vulnerable, implementing a stringent ban on a new asset class seems like yet another way of recusing itself from the financial future. As mentioned earlier, determined UK crypto investors will almost certainly be able to get around the new ban to access offshore exchanges with less legal accountability to the UK and more extravagant and risky leveraged offerings. 

But maybe a somewhat built-in assumption is that, while the technological implementation of any ban is going to be slow and imperfect, a retail investor capable of working around it is not exactly the person the FCA is most worried about protecting.

DoJ vs. the elusive Mr. McAfee

After decades of intercontinental outrageousness, John McAfee was arrested in Spain for tax evasion. He also faces a suit from the SEC for fraudulent ICO promotion.

McAfee first found success in the 80s at the head of the firm that produces the antivirus software that still bears his name. He left the company in the 90s and has been bouncing around the world more or less ever since, racking up guns, substance addictions, and allegations of sexual assault and murder. Also not paying his taxes, allegedly. He was posted up in Cuba out of the reach of U.S. authorities for a while.

Despite his early successes in technology, McAfee has for decades built a personal brand on foundations of infamy. The SEC’s allegations suggest that he managed to translate that megaphone into millions of dollars by plugging into the curious hypedraulic mechanics of the ICO boom. Earlier this year, he tried to launch a privacy token that he admitted was largely taken from another project. McAfee is hardly what you would call a builder. While everyone is innocent until proven guilty, McAfee’s absence from the crypto scene would be a blessing for the industry’s reputation.

Further reads

The Bank for International Settlements put out a new and extensive report on Central Bank Digital Currencies and the associated risks and prospects.

Tax attorney Jason Freeman runs down the latest memorandum from the IRS on how to get your taxes on virtual assets in order.

Writing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Rainey Reitman talks problems with the extradition hearings for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Law Decoded: Police and thieves on their screens, Oct 2–9

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Coinbase customers can now dodge bank withdrawal wait times

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Coinbase has unveiled a faster way for its customers to move digital currencies out of crypto and into their bank accounts.

The U.S. friendly crypto platform now allows 40 different countries faster cash withdrawals, Coinbase wrote in a Oct. blog post. “Customers in the U.S., U.K. and Europe can withdraw funds with a linked Visa debit card,” the post said. “In the U.S., customers will be able to also withdraw funds with their Mastercard.”

This fresh feature incurs an additional 1.5% charge on U.S. users, while E.U. and U.K. participants pay a slightly higher rate of 2%.  

Under usual circumstances, transferring fiat from crypto exchanges takes between one and five business days to settle on the involved bank’s back end. This means users must wait that time period before they can use cash withdrawn from exchanges. This new option from Coinbase speeds along the process when using a payment card, making funds available to spend instantly.

Part of the value held within Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is their efficiency and transaction speeds. Bitcoin, for example, does not take nearly as long as banks to fully transfer for further use. Using Bitcoin, however, sometimes requires interaction with traditional banking systems, which operate at a slower speed. With this update, Coinbase has increased the rapidity of this once-unhurried process.

Coinbase customers can now dodge bank withdrawal wait times

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