In a blog post on Tuesday, the popular crypto exchange app Coinbase announced that it will soon be offering a crypto index fund to accredited US investors.
The fund will provide investors an easy-to-use channel to invest in the four large currencies that are listed on Coinbase’s home exchange, GDAX: Bitcoin , Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.
According to the blog post, the fund will be weighted by market capitalization. Any new coins that are added to GDAX’s listings will also be added to the fund, although Coinbase released a statement yesterday announcing that the firm has “made no decision to add additional assets to either GDAX or Coinbase,” and that “any statement to the contrary is untrue and not authorized by the company.”
Announcing Coinbase Index Fundhttps://t.co/ca98IKrzUv
— Coinbase (@coinbase) March 6, 2018
Coinbase also stated that it was developing additional investment products that will be available to "all investors" and "cover a broader range of digital assets." Business Insider reported that for now, the fund is only available to accredited investors because Coinbase is waiting for clarification on crypto Regulation from the United States’ SEC.
A Big Year For Coinbase
The launch of the fund reflects a strategic move to satisfy increasing demand for access to crypto assets by institutional investors. Reuben Bramanthan, Coinbase’s product manager, told Business Insider that the firm is "seeing new investors coming to the market because they see an asset that is not correlated and outperforms, but they don't know which ones to buy."
Coinbase has been making waves in the cryptosphere as the most popular exchange in the United States, closing out 2017 with more than a billion dollars in profits.
However, the company has had its share of struggles. The entry of unprecedented new users onto the Coinbase platform--as many as 100,000 in a single day, by some reports--caused a number of outages and a shortage of customer service representatives.
The company is also fighting two class-action lawsuits, one accusing Coinbase of artificially inflating the price of Bitcoin Cash and facilitating insider trading; the other alleging that Coinbase has not allowed some customers’ funds to be redeemed.
In spite of Coinbase’s growing pains, however, the company continues to position itself as one of the most easily-accessible exchanges available to the crypto community. While the new fund has not yet been launched, its conception could be representative that the crypto giant is going even bigger.
