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The Cryptonomist interviewed Daniel Seifert, the Vice President and Regional Managing Director, EMEA, of the crypto exchange Coinbase on the occasion of their France launch event on February 20th at the magnificent Hotel de Crillon in Paris.
With this registration, Coinbase is planning on accelerating our go-to-market activities in France by making their product easier to use through increased localization, engaging more closely with the vibrant Web3 ecosystem in France and accelerating their growth marketing and partnership efforts in the country.
During the event, probably also related to the spirit of the upcoming event “NFT Paris”, there was also the opportunity to mint an exclusive NFT from artist Zancan.
But here is the interview with Coinbase
1. What strategies has Coinbase implemented to navigate the regulatory landscape across various countries in the EMEA region?
Daniel: First of all thank you for meeting us here, it’s a pleasure. When Coinbase was founded – we have the luxury of being one of the earlier players being founded in 2012 – the ambition was to build globally the safest and trusted platform. And I think with building such a platform not only do you seek to have the best product and the best and safest processes in place, but also the most compliant processes in place.
Obviously nowadays you have a sort of a system of different licenses and regimes in the different member States so now we are seated in Paris and we’re grateful for having received the French registration from the Autorité des Marchés Financiers recently. So it’s about making sure you always gonna be compliant with the market and the kind of regulation they give you and Europe is leading the way in crypto regulation.
2. How does Coinbase approach security measures to ensure the safety of user funds and data, especially given the increasing concerns about cyber threats?
Trust and safety are the foundations of what this company has built on. We have world class processes and teams that work in this area with the best practices. And Coinbase is one of the few crypto exchanges that have never lost customer funds. And this is a milestone in the market.
3. Could you share insights into the adoption trends of cryptocurrencies and digital assets within the EMEA region?
Especially because we are here in France, I will speak about this country. A growing share if you look at the statistics over the last couple of past years the numbers of French people that own crypto assets are continuously increasing which for us is a very good sign.
A product that we’ve always thought about as the future of finance should be obviously much much better than anything else that is available for the customers. Especially in France we can see a higher adoption rate in Europe, so this is a very forward country in this respect with a strong crypto ecosystem. Some of the most reputable companies and best names are in Paris, but there are also a lot of small companies and a high spirit of entrepreneurship.
4. What initiatives is Coinbase undertaking to foster education and awareness about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology?
Learning or education are connected to this goal of bringing a million people to the crypto. This is very central for us and for our mission and so learning and education are fundamental key pieces of making that happen.
So the company is constantly thinking about new ways to evaluate what work and what we can do better and one element that we have called learning elements that can help people to interact with the app and cryptocurrencies. In other countries we have some events in real life and it’s interesting to interact with different people and ecosystems that for example they have never interacted with crypto.
When we did an event in Milan there was an old gentleman that asked us how to use the app because he thought that it was the best way to have an experience and to understand how he could do it rather than read about it online.
5. With the growing interest in decentralized finance (DeFi), how is Coinbase addressing opportunities and challenges related to DeFi projects?
We have the main retail app which is called the Coinbase app and then we have Coinbase wallet which is a decentralized wallet so it’s self custodial and when we go there we have a browser tab where you can discover some functionalities and we have the Vetted protocols that you can look at. But what I would think is that almost in some expects the focus is beyond just DeFi.
I think DeFi has been around for a while and it’s almost mature, there are still a lot of things to be done and tons of things can be worked on and improved but we start to see exciting things and developments that move more into real world use cases so like the decentralized social media called Farcaster which is like an alternative to Twitter. And there are other things like Zora, so this is the kind of thing where the interest is moving to.
6. What are some key differences in user behavior or preferences that Coinbase has observed between the EMEA region and other global markets?
If you think about cryptographic assets, there are the biggest names like Bitcoin, and then there are younger technologies and in different regions of the world you will see which kind of assets people would prefer. It depends on the economic backdrop that you can see in this market. If you think about Europe it’s an incredibly developed space and the type of financial system that we have access to in this region is very advanced and it’s leading worldwide so in this backdrop you’ll be using a technology differently and if you are in a market with high inflation and you’ve seen a couple of changes in your value, maybe the way you’ll be accessing the technology will be different compared to in Paris. Depending on which market you’re in, the use of cryptocurrencies will be a store of value for you or an investment case for you or a payment method.