The popular American crypto exchange Coinbase has launched an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk, dedicated for institutional clients. Speaking to New York-based media outlet Cheddar, Christine Sandler, head of sales at Coinbase, revealed that the new service will be available for Coinbase Prime customers.

Coinbase has been luring institutional investors for a while

An OTC trade happens when two parties deal directly, instead of relying on the supervision of an exchange. Crypto punters around the world use over-the-counter trades, especially in countries like China, where crypto exchanges have been shut down by the government. Changpeng Zhao, head of the leading Binance exchange, has recently claimed that the OTC market might be at least as big as the crypto exchange market.

Ms. Sandler claimed that, “We launched our OTC business as a complement to our exchange business because we found a lot of institutions were using OTC as an on-ramp for crypto trading. We felt this was a huge benefit to our clients to actually leverage both our exchange and our OTC business.“ She has also revealed that the OTC trading service will likely integrated with Coinbase Custody, another institutional-focused branch, launched this July.

The Coinbase OTC desk was first rumoured to be launched in May, however that turned out to be mere gossip. The exchange now joins other notable American crypto businesses, such as Gemini and Circle that have started their over-the-counter trading operations earlier this year.

Institutional clients still believe in crypto

Despite the well-documented struggles of the entire digital asset industry in recent weeks, Sandler has offered an optimistic outlook, saying that large clients have not lost their faith in the burgeoning industry.

According to her, “Crypto decline has definitely been front-of-mind. From our crypto-first clients, we are hearing that nothing has changed with respect to the technology, and that they’re still absolutely committed to crypto and blockchain. So, I think that there is one silver lining to this volatility… And that is that crypto has become front and center in mainstream financial media for the past few weeks.“

Bitcoin (BTC) and other virtual currencies have seen a slight rebound in the past 24 hours. Most major coins have gained 5-10 percent, while some (notably TRX) surged over 20 percent. BTC has resurfaced above the $4000 mark after hovering around $3700 on Tuesday and now sits comfortably at around $4300 at press time. Ripple (XRP) continues to bear the flag of the second biggest cryptocurrency, now ahead of the dethroned ethereum (ETH) by $3 billion in market cap.

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