America-headquartered crypto exchange Coinbase will widen its Aussie service scope, releasing a local entity and an updated suite of offerings for retail crypto traders, with institutional products soon to follow.

Specifically, Nana Murugesan, Coinbase’s vice president of international and business development, reportedly revealed that deveopment during bearish movements throughout the markets has “paid off big time during the bull run”, further sharing his confidence in what he sees in the local market.

The “baseline signals” Murugesan explains, nominally the local awareness of crypto and people who consider it as the future of finance, are “kind of on par or even better” in Australia in comparison to the United States and other markets. 

“Australia definitely punches way, way over its weight in the APAC region, certainly at a global level too. And from a revenue contribution standpoint, I feel pretty good about what it’s going to do.”

Per Murugesan, it began with designing a localized infrastructure, incorporating a local entity (Coinbase Australia Pty Ltd) as well as securing registration to roll out digital currency exchange services with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the nation’s financial intelligence agency.

“We’ve been very impressed with the open door that we’ve received in Canberra and with different policymakers.” Murugesan remarked, further sharing that the exchange has received “tough questions” in terms of its platform and token listings. 

“Given the token mapping exercise that’s going on, there are a lot of technical questions that we are getting from the Treasury and other departments. […] Deep technical questions is another thing that we are seeing in Australia at a level deeper than some other countries.”

The exchange will additionally team up with RMIT University’s Blockchain Innovation Hub to run assessment for Web3 opportunities in the nation. Murugesan added that it’s working with the University of New South Wales and others to create related courses and assist in research programs.