Coinbase Global (COIN) is set to benefit from the potential transfer of about $1.6 billion worth of USDC from MakerDAO to Coinbase Prime. In September, a Maker Improvement Proposal submitted by Coinbase, stated how a portion of USDC could be moved to Coinbase Prime for custody and rewards.
The proposal outlined that Coinbase is uniquely placed to offer a USDC Rewards Program to MakerDAO that meets the evaluative criteria. Owen Lau, Oppenheimer analyst, highlighted that 88% of the votes are in favour of the proposal. He believes it will be very much accepted by Maker. The transfer between Coinbase and MakerDAO is Maker’s ongoing effort to allocate around $4 billion in USDC from its treasury to institutional investors. It wants to diversify its balance sheet and earn some yield.
Maker invested $500 million, in October, in U.S treasuries and corporate bonds. Lau said the added USDC on Coinbase Prime would help the company gain assets and aid the crypto exchange’s ability to conduct similar proposals. This will potentially grow the total addressable market of USDC and boost its revenue share.
Moreover, Coinbase will waive commission fees for USDC sales and purchases made in any fiat currency. The platform, in a blog post, pointed out that users usually have to have fees in the process of converting their local currency into USDC. It described this as a barrier to broader international adoption. Coinbase said this can be corrected by establishing global parity for all users. The crypto exchange noted that adoption of USDC has been quite conservative outside of the United States. This can be attributed to fees charged to convert the local currency into USDC.
