Coinbase Considered Buying FTX Branch to Enter Europe with Crypto Derivatives

In a recent article, Fortune reported that the publicly-traded US exchange Coinbase planned to expand into Europe by launching a crypto derivative offering there. For this purpose it is considering an acquisition of the European branch of the FTX platform – FTX Europe. However, the negotiations between Coinbase and FTX never reached the final stage.

Coinbase planned to offer crypto derivatives in the European market, per Fortune, - those are complex investment tools based on the value of Bitcoin or Ethereum. They constitute a massive part of crypto trading volumes.

The second half of 2023 has already shown that crypto derivates trading volume has exceeded that of spot trading by six times – this estimate is based on the data provided by Kaigo Research.

Over the last few years, Coinbase and Gemini have set up exchanges in Asia to tap the local markets. At the end of the summer, Coinbase also got a green light for offering cryptocurrency futures trading to US-based clients. They are planning to launch them within next few weeks, per Fortune’s sources.

Until the crash of FTX in early November last year, FTX Europe was the only platform offering perpetual futures contracts in Europe since it possessed the Cypriot license from the local regulators necessary for offering that product. However, now Europe has introduced its own new crypto regulatory rules. Documents reviewed by Fortune show that FTX Europe kept landing thousands of new users until FTX, which owned it, collapsed entirely.

Coinbase showed interest in a potential purchase of the platform in late 2022, immediately after FTX crashed. However, it no longer intends to get that deal done. Apart from Coinbase, among the candidates to buy FTX Europe was also major exchange Crypto.com.