Coinbase Custody Conducts First OTC Trade From Cold Storage

Coinbase Custody, the custodial tool of United States-based crypto exchange Coinbase, has completed its first over-the-counter (OTC) trade from cold storage, according to a blog post published on March 13.

The post reveals that Coinbase Custody is now directly integrated with Coinbase’s OTC desk, which enables customers to use the OTC desk to price and confirm trades prior to moving funds.

The product purportedly provides easy and immediate liquidity on users’ offline funds, meaning that it now takes less time for Custody users to get access to their funds and avoid the waiting period to access them.

In February, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase Brian Armstrong outlined what he believes to be four common misconceptions about crypto custody solutions. Armstrong’s arguments tackled the perception that hot storage is always necessary to provide the flexibility and speed required to execute trades.

Armstrong noted that participating in a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network and earning returns on staked coins does not necessarily imply the latter need to be stored in a hot wallet. He also disentangled the relationship between single-key holders and whether storage is hot or cold, and mentioned hardware security modules, arguing that they can come close to the security of cold storage.

Coinbase launched OTC trading last November. At the time, Christine Sandler, head of sales at Coinbase, pointed out an increased demand for OTC crypto trading from institutional players. Sandler said the availability of both exchange and OTC business was a “huge benefit” to their customers.

Sandler then revealed that the OTC service was likely to be combined with Coinbase Custody at a later date.

Yesterday, Cointelegraph reported that Coinbase introduced a service to link users’ accounts on its main platform to its Coinbase Wallet app, allowing  quicker transfers from the main account to the wallet. In future, the company plans to allow customers to send crypto back to their main account from the wallet.