The bitcoin service firm’s expansion into Canada means that Canadian users can now buy and sell bitcoin using its Buy/Sell service as well as trade the BTC/CAD currency pair on Coinbase Exchange.
The expansion is part of Coinbase’s strategy to extend its services to 30 countries by the end of this year. The timeline was announced back in January by the company’s CEO Brian Armstrong when the company secured $75m in Series C funding. It is currently available in 27 countries in North America and Europe.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Armstrong said that countries where English language proficiency and technology literacy were high were more likely to regulatory environments that could be more easily navigated.
In relation to the specific expansion into Canada, Armstrong said, “It’s not where we would want to launch first, it’s actually where the partners we have to work with are able to work with us first. But certainly Canada has a huge population of people that are interested in bitcoin that didn’t have easy ways to buy and sell it.”
It is also important to note that the company’s CAD/BTC exchange is being handled in a separate order book, meaning, for now, US exchange users will not be able to access the pair via their US accounts.
“There’s certainly an advantage to multiple currency pairs, but we wanted to be more conservative from a legal and regulatory sense,” Armstrong commented.
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