It's a Floor Wax AND a Dessert Topping
September 22, 2018·0 comments·In Brief
Coinbase says it doesn't run a proprietary trading desk. The New York Attorney General says it does. But both are telling the truth, which reveals something more troubling than either claim alone. The company has engineered a way to pocket risk-free profits from retail customers while technically avoiding the legal designation that would trigger regulation.
- Two regulatory bodies contradicted each other about Coinbase's trading practices. But the contradiction itself obscures the actual mechanism at work. Both statements can be simultaneously true because the definitions don't align with what's really happening.
- A traditional prop desk takes risk when it trades against clients. Coinbase's operation does something different: it collects a commission fee and a price spread without ever holding the risk. The money is extracted before the risk even exists.
- The company charges 1% in commission fees and pockets roughly 0.5% in spreads between retail offers and professional bids. If a business makes more money from commissions than from proprietary trading profits, it's not technically a prop desk. At Coinbase, the answer is clear.
- This structure is presented as customer-friendly, designed to provide "an easy-to-use customer experience." What it actually provides is a mechanism for capturing two different forms of profit from the same transaction while bearing none of the associated risk.
- The real question isn't whether regulators will act, but whether they can. Coinbase has found a gap between legal definitions and economic reality. The question is whether that gap can be closed.
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