Coinbase is expanding in Europe despite a cold crypto market

In the middle of a so-called “crypto winter,” Coinbase is expanding into many European countries. Nana Murugesan, the vice president of Coinbase, said that the company wants to register in Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands, even though it has fired several workers and stopped offering jobs.

The cryptocurrency exchange, which is based in the United States, has already hired its first people in Switzerland. It also has licenses to trade cryptocurrencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany.

In an interview on June 29, Murugesan said that the company is trying to grow into Europe. Even though the bitcoin market is going down, the business is open to buying other businesses in the area.

He thinks that now is the best time to start doing business in other countries because so many businesses that focus on cryptocurrencies are having trouble with cash flow and are at risk of going out of business. Due to the crypto market meltdown, the value of the market has dropped by almost $2 trillion. The liquidity crisis has caused Three Arrows Capital and Celsius Network to almost go out of business, which has caused the market capitalization to drop to about $900 billion at the moment. He talked about:

“The last big bear market was in 2015 and 2016, when we first started doing business in the U.K. and Europe.”

As of the time this article was written, Coinbase had not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Binance, FTX, and Crypto.com are some of Coinbase’s newest competitors. Coinbase is the best-known cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, but it faces tough competition. The shares of Coinbase went down after the U.S. branch of Binance said it would stop charging fees for trading Bitcoin.

Coinbase is trying to keep up with its competitors, which are getting more popular in other parts of the world. Both FTX and Binance got licenses from the Middle East. Also, France and Italy have given Binance licenses, and the company is applying for licenses in other European countries.

Coinbase has had to let people go, just like the rest of the technology industry around the world. Due to the crisis, the company had to lay off nearly 18% of its workers around the world in June. This included workers in the UK and Ireland.