Not the Christmas run we expected, but bitcoin has continued to rise, despite a bearish run that saw prices crash from $5,000 to an all-time low of $3,200. Asiff Hirji President of U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase said the current recovery is not surprising and the run should continue into the next year.
Speaking with CNBC’s Fast Money, Hirji was of the opinion that the market could go beyond its fundamentals, saying, sometimes “things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem.”
Bitcoin soaring this week as the markets selloff. Here’s what @coinbase president @asiffhirji had to say about the move pic.twitter.com/dCrXkhq5bz
— CNBC’s Fast Money (@CNBCFastMoney) December 20, 2018
Hirji believes the market has witnessed more innovation in the last year which has exceeded everything from the past years. For the Coinbase honcho, cryptos are getting more visible and use cases are getting stronger.
We’ve never had as much innovation as we have today,
Hirji explained.
For many blockchain companies, the market crash meant massive layoffs, with the most notable being Ethereum production Studio ConsenSys axing a portion of its workforce and blockchain social network Steemit laying off 70% of its employees, citing the downturn in the market.
Crypto exchanges have also been battling with dried up volumes as the market witnessed massive selloffs from scared investors.
In all the chaos, Coinbase has continued to push out products updates with its 12 Days of Announcement on its blog, where it promises to announce a product update on its blog for 12 days. While new product feature like the Crypto Convert and the Coinbase Earn have featured on its updates, there has been an assortment of new coin listings, leading to speculations that Coinbase is trying to increase trading volumes by listing more cryptos for trade.
Hirji said this wasn’t the case. He went on to explain that there are thousands of cryptos out there and the exchange would “over the course of time, add as many cryptocurrencies that matter in as many geographies that we are allowed.”
This is the start of the next great wave of technology, and you should expect to see more and more cryptocurrencies over time.
Speaking on the growth of Coinbase’s institutional products, Hirji said institutions need a regulated and compliant venue to invest in cryptocurrencies, and there has been an uptick of the onboarding of institutions into Coinbase’s custody products.
Institutions need a valid venue to trade on, a qualified custodian to store with and they want to make sure there is actually liquidity. We have built a lot of liquidity, and we have the best most regulated, most qualified custodian in the space. We think we have built a lot of infrastructures to allow institutions to invest in crypto products.
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