MicroStrategy Conference: Coinbase and Genesis Highlight Massive Institutional Growth

Institutions are making up 50% of Coinbase’s business and this means that they are up by 10% from three years ago.

This is what the head of Coinbase Institutional said Wednesday during MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin for Corporations conference.

Brett Tejpaul told MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor that the increase in business has also led to an increase in the institutional group’s size, from about a dozen people to 150.

It’s important to note the fact that institutions need to know they can transact their business in large volume, and that will be even more important in coming years.

A far more recent emerging theme, according to what he said, is retailers interested in non-fungible tokens (NFT).

This may lead these companies into holding BTC and crypto in their treasuries, once they are comfortable with the concept, and then accept customer payments in crypto, according to Tejpaul.

As CoinDesk notes, Tejpaul also made sure to highlight the fact that institutions are getting comfortable holding stablecoins, from roughly $10 billion three years ago to $150 billion today.

He added that stablecoins keep institutions in the crypto ecosystem during those times when they’re not comfortable holding BTC.

He also noted that there was a marked increase in stablecoin usage at the same time as BTC’s plunge during December and January.

There are various bullish moves that are taking place in the crypto space as the crypto market is struggling to recover following recent corrections in price.

It’s been recently revealed that the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell appeared before lawmakers on Tuesday to defend his position as head of the central bank.

He also made sure to answer questions about what is next for monetary policy as inflation rages on.

As Blockworks notes, following a series of remarks about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and a Fed digital dollar. Check out more details about this in our previous article.