On Tuesday just past, the CME Group announced plans to launch a futures market for Bitcoin. Since then, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the US has reported an influx of users. It’s widely believed that the expectation of greater institutional money entering the market is driving the high number of registrations Coinbase has experienced.
The company reported a massive 100,000 new customers within the last 24 hours. The data was compiled by Alistair Milne of Altana Digital Currency Fund. The chief investment officer Tweeted his findings on November 2nd.
According to the San Francisco-based crypto exchange, they now have 11.9 million users. Founded in 2012, Coinbase represents one of the easiest ways to buy various digital currencies. They currently support Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin.
The company have been in and out of favour with many within the space. Earlier this year, their GDAX platform was involved in the Ether “flash crash“. Last month, they were under inspection by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with regards the anomaly. Many users have also complained about network outages during crucial moments for traders. In times of high volume, Coinbase servers would frequently overload and crash the service entirely. More recently, however, the exchange has won back some fans by eradicating the waiting period for certain customers wishing to buy into a digital currency. Previously funds would be locked for several days whilst fiat funds moved. This had been the chagrin of many users.
It’s not just the number of new users registering for Coinbase accounts that’s gone parabolic since the announcement. The cost of a single Bitcoin rose dramatically from around $6,150 at the start of Tuesday, to over $7,300 at the time of writing. Many are anticipating the futures market to continue to drive the price following its launch too. The rationale behind such opinion is that many institutional investors who are unable to get exposure to the cryptocurrency at present will flood in sending the price to the proverbial “moon”.
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