Barclays Reportedly To Break Off Working With Coinbase

British banking giant Barclays breaks relations with US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, according to a Coindesk report on August 13. Anonymous industry sources said the British bank will no longer provide service Coinbase; the exchange opened an account at Barclays in March 2018.

Despite the fact that a new partner bank has already been found (reportedly tit will be ClearBank), this news is expected to hit the crypto community hard. The market was closely associated with a traditional banking institution, and the break could lead to the cease of Coinbase users' access to United Kingdom’s Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) and slow down the exchange of cryptocurrencies for pounds.

The exact cause of the split up is unknown, but an anonymous source said that Barclays risk appetite decreased:

“I’m not sure exactly why or what’s been driving that, maybe there has been some activity they are not happy with. But it’s about Barclays’ comfort level with crypto as a whole.”

However, Coinbase did not suffer much from this decision: in July it became known that over the past year the exchange registered eight million new users.

Image courtesy of Barclays

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