In an update to a blog post from months prior, Coinbase has withdrawn its plans to launch a USDC APY lending program on the platform in response to mounting legal pressure from regulators.

Coinbase Bends to the SEC

The news was quietly released this Friday when Coinbase updated its June blog post that announced an upcoming lending product. After encouraging users to pre-enroll for its program, the team has now discontinued its waitlist, which attracted hundreds of thousands of American customers.

“Our goal is to create great products for our customers and to advance our mission to increase economic freedom in the world,” reads the update. “As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we’ve made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program announced below.”

Citing “regulatory clarity” as a reason to table the lending service, Coinbase appears to be acting in line with statements made by CEO Brian Armstrong on Twitter earlier this month.

On September 7th, he blasted the SEC’s difficulty and lack of clarity on regulatory requirements, despite his company’s numerous attempts to comply and communicate with them. This was after the SEC threatened to sue Coinbase over the aforementioned lending program – a decision with which Armstrong heavily disagreed but nevertheless agreed to follow.

At the end of the update, Coinbase still promised to keep bringing “innovative, trusted programs and products” to the market.

The Trouble of Defining a Security

At the heart of Armstrong and the SEC’s dispute is a disagreement on what constitutes a “security.” The program in question – Lend– would have offered Coinbase users 4% APY on their USDC offerings.

While the SEC considers Lend to involve securities, Armstrong sees it simply as a lending product for which precedent has already been set numerous times.

The SEC has proven a difficult hurdle to overcome for the cryptocurrency industry in the United States. Businesses have applied with the regulator numerous times for both lending products and ETFs to no avail – both products which their neighbors in Canada have readily accepted.

The millennial-focused trading portal is edging closer to launching a long-awaited app that will enable its growing user-base to send and receive cryptocurrencies.

A beta version of Robinhood’s iPhone app showed the company’s latest upgrades on the new digital asset features, according to Bloomberg.

There is a hidden image showing a waiting list for users eager to get their hands on the app and code referring to crypto transfers, it added.

Delving Deeper into Crypto

Robinhood users can already buy and sell cryptocurrencies on the platform but they need to convert them to and from USD. With a native app, users will be able to send crypto assets to each other directly and set up two-factor authentication for additional security.

Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev stated that adding crypto wallets is a priority for the company’s developers and they are actively working on such.

“The ability to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies is tricky to do with scale, and we want to make sure it’s done correctly and properly.”

He did not specify a launch date, but the beta app leak suggests it is not too far away. Users of the new functions will need to activate crypto sending and receiving and the registration page will require an identity check, the report added.

On Sept. 11, CryptoPotato reported that Robinhood had launched incentives to promote longer-term cryptocurrency investing. The zero-fee recurring purchase feature enables users to schedule digital asset purchases for regular intervals with buys as low as a dollar.

This will encourage customers to build their cryptocurrency portfolios over time and “become a whole coiner,” stated Robinhood.

Robinhood Users Hungry For Crypto

Cryptocurrency trading has been one of the biggest drivers of revenue for Robinhood this year. Dogecoin has been the crown jewel, according to the company. It reported that 62% of its $233 million in second-quarter crypto income came from DOGE trading.

It added that more than half of all transaction-based revenue on the platform came from digital asset trading. The firm did warn that Q3 would not be as prosperous due to “seasonal headwinds and lower trading activity across the industry.”

Robinhood share prices have already fallen 43% since their all-time high of a little over $70 in early August. They are currently trading down 1.68% since Monday’s open at $40.70 according to Yahoo! Finance.

[PRESS RELEASE – New York, United States, 20th September 2021]

Taker Protocol, a crypto liquidity protocol for NFTs, has raised $3 million from a number of reputable investors to build new financial primitives into the burgeoning NFT market.

The round was led by Electric Capital, with DCG, Ascentive Assets, Dragonfly Capital, Spartan Group, The LAO, Sfermion, and Morningstar Ventures participating as well.

Taker Protocol focuses on improving the liquidity available in the NFT market. Due to the unique non-fungible structure of NFTs, existing DeFi primitives are difficult to integrate into the market, resulting in significant issues in terms of overall liquidity. The value of an NFT is extremely volatile and often effectively becomes zero as no buyers can be found at any reasonable price. Furthermore, NFTs are difficult to use productively after purchase and often end up forgotten in the user’s wallet.

Taker Protocol aims to solve the worst of the liquidity issues. Allowing lenders and borrowers to liquidate and rent assets that aren’t cryptocurrencies creates new liquidity streams and opportunities. For Taker, these assets will include NFTs, financial papers, synthetic assets, and much more.

The TKR token defines membership in the Taker DAO, which has several key functions in the system. In addition to setting loan-to-value rates and other parameters in the protocol, the DAO will also contribute in fairly appraising a particular NFT or NFT collection. This means that each asset supported by Taker will have a guaranteed fair floor price. In return, TKR holders will be able to obtain rewards and receive a portion of platform income.

The funds received will help Taker launch the full version of the protocol across multiple chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, BSC and Near. The support of major stakeholders and participants in the NFT ecosystem will also help further development of the project.

Taker DAO contains many different Curator DAOs (Sub-DAOs), each sub-DAO will manage their own whitelist and a floor price for any NFT on their whitelist if the borrower defaults on the loan. We believe that it is best to mitigate the risks for our lenders by carefully selecting the NFT assets that our community desires and trusts the most. Aligning the interest of the DAOs with that of the lenders, we will mitigate the risk exposure for the lenders and optimize the profits for the DAOs. Moreover, each sub-DAO will have its own funds and can choose to focus exclusively on a specific type of NFT assets. For example, it could be artworks-only or Metaverse-only.

Taker Co-Founder Angel Xu comments:

“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome so many well-established investment funds to the team. Their participation heralds an exciting new phase for the protocol as we seek to address persistent problems in the NFT lending market for the benefit of end-users. This investment will enable us to further optimize liquidation of NFT assets across multiple blockchains, removing the barriers to entry that prevent new players from entering the market.”

“Taker Protocol is using an innovative approach to solve the biggest problem in the NFT space — lack of liquidity. With Taker, we are one step closer to the world where anyone anywhere can use their NFT assets to take out a loan.” (Maria Shen, Partner at Electric Capital)

About Taker

NFT DeFi: Taker is the first protocol to provide liquidity to the NFT market through a DAO. It is a multi-strategy, cross-chain lending protocol for lenders and borrowers to liquidate and rent all kinds of crypto assets, including financial papers, synthetic assets, and more. Taker provides ensured liquidity via our lenderDao infrastructure and extensions that could be integrated into NFT marketplaces.