Coinbase, the biggest crypto broker and one of the biggest exchange said they had more than doubled the size of their engineering team in a Voluntary Response to the New York Attorney General Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative.

“Our professionals have worked hard to achieve greater efficiencies in database management, improved caching to reduce load on our databases, an overhaul of our APIs, and substantial re-architecting of our code base.

These efforts and others have resulted in a ​1000% increase in our surge, transaction capacity ​relative to Q3 of 2017,” Coinbase said.

Moreover, they said they expect to double this 1,000% in the coming months as the exchange reveals they have 1,000 employees with 200 of them working on compliance.

“We have 41 licenses in 39 states. Most of these licenses are money transmission licenses. Significantly, we hold a Bitlicense from New York State’s Department of Financial Services (“​DFS​”), the nation’s only license specific to virtual currency regulation and supervision.

That license entails considerable regulatory oversight, including frequent onsite examinations, substantial net worth requirements, and near-continuous interaction with the DFS,” they say.

In a highly professional response, quite in contrast to that of Kraken, Coinbase further revealed they train a number of law agencies:

“We train more law enforcement agencies globally than anyone…. including: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Agency, Marshals Service, U.S. Postal Service, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigative Division, Europol, Interpol, Scotland Yard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Swiss Federal Police, the Spanish Federal Police and many state and local agencies, including the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.”

The exchange further said they work closely with CFTC and with SEC. In regards to the latter, they have applied to become a regulated securities exchange ahead of plans to list tokens.

There is wide speculation Coinbase might IPO, making it the first crypto exchange to do so. Among their many assets in any such IPO would probably be their 41 licenses.

That’s because the regulatory barrier may well keep competition out as few start-ups can afford the significant resources required for all the necessary compliance.

Thus reducing competition to near monopoly at a very real cost for end users who might not be benefited lower fees, more features or other benefits of competition.

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