Coinbase COO Emilie Choi says the country’s largest crypto exchange by volume doesn’t plan to bring its retail trading fees down to zero.
Why it matters: Over the summer, Binance entered the U.S. market with zer0-fee bitcoin trading — flaming speculation that the world’s largest crypto exchange could launch a pricing war stateside and eat into Coinbase’s market share.
Details: Choi told an audience at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco that the company is not engaging in a battle on the price front.
- “We’ve actually felt no pressure to change,” she said. “The reason I think it’s not a high-pressure situation is because of this: Users inherently value the security and ease of use that we’ve talked about [in] the suite of services, so they are willing to pay for the premium offerings.”
- “There’s a bunch of issues with zero fee,” she added. “Wash trading and so on. We are going to continue to play our own game.”
Background: Stock-trading startup Robinhood won many customers from older incumbents with zero fees.
- While it helped Robinhood reach scale, zero fees weren’t a differentiator for long. Incumbents soon also adopted zero-fee trading, making it a norm.