August 2, 2019, marked a day of significant infrastructure expansion in the cryptocurrency industry, with Bitcoin.com announcing plans to launch a centralized exchange and Grayscale Investments selecting Coinbase Custody to safeguard its growing portfolio of digital asset products — developments that reflected the diverging paths of retail accessibility and institutional-grade crypto services.
TL;DR
- Bitcoin.com announces centralized crypto exchange launching September 2, 2019, with BCH, BTC, ETH, and USDT base currencies
- Roger Ver’s platform promises user-friendly interface, high liquidity, and SLP token support
- Grayscale Investments selects Coinbase Custody as custodian for its digital asset products
- Grayscale managed over $2.1 billion in cryptocurrency investment trusts at the time
- Bitcoin trades at $10,518 as both retail and institutional infrastructure expand
Bitcoin.com Enters the Exchange Arena
Bitcoin.com, the cryptocurrency platform led by executive chairman Roger Ver — widely known as “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early advocacy — announced on August 1 that it would launch a centralized cryptocurrency exchange on September 2, 2019. The new platform, dubbed Exchange.Bitcoin.com, was designed to complement the company’s existing suite of Bitcoin Cash-focused products, which already included wallets, a gambling site, and a peer-to-peer trading platform at Local.Bitcoin.com.
The exchange promised a user-friendly interface, easy navigation, high liquidity, and a powerful matching engine. At launch, BCH, BTC, ETH, and USDT were confirmed as base currencies, with dozens of trading pairs expected to be available from day one. In a strategic move aimed at the growing token economy, Bitcoin.com also announced plans to support Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) tokens shortly after launch — a feature that would allow users to create and trade custom tokens on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, similar to the ERC-20 standard on Ethereum.
“We’re on the cusp of something very exciting with SLP tokens,” Ver said in the announcement. “It’s the beginning of a world where we can tokenize anything and, as people realize the potential this holds, they’re going to start demanding a place to trade their tokens.” To attract early users, Bitcoin.com offered fee discounts and prize draws for pre-registered accounts.
Grayscale Makes the Biggest Custody Transfer in Crypto History
On the same day, Grayscale Investments — the world’s largest digital currency asset manager and a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group — announced it had selected Coinbase Custody to serve as the custodian for the digital assets underlying its growing family of investment products. The move was described as one of the largest custody transfers in cryptocurrency history.
By mid-2019, Grayscale managed more than $2.1 billion in cryptocurrency investment trusts, including funds tracking Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, XRP, Bitcoin Cash, and Zcash. The company reported that 56 percent of the capital it raised in the first half of 2018 came from institutional investors, with an additional 20 percent from accredited individual investors and 16 percent from retirement accounts. The shift to Coinbase Custody, a regulated and insured custodian, was seen as a critical step in attracting larger institutional allocations.
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the company’s flagship product, was one of the first securities solely invested in and deriving value from Bitcoin’s price. It enabled traditional investors to gain exposure to BTC without the challenges of directly buying, storing, and safeguarding the digital asset — a proposition that was becoming increasingly attractive as Bitcoin traded around $10,518 on August 2.
The Institutional-Retail Divide Narrows
The dual announcements on August 2, 2019, highlighted a cryptocurrency market that was simultaneously expanding in two directions. On one side, Bitcoin.com’s exchange represented the continuing push to make cryptocurrency trading accessible to retail users, with a focus on Bitcoin Cash and the emerging SLP token ecosystem. On the other, Grayscale’s partnership with Coinbase Custody underscored the growing demand from institutions for regulated, secure exposure to digital assets.
With Ethereum trading at $217.87 and the total crypto market capitalization exceeding $260 billion, both segments of the market were seeing renewed interest following the brutal bear market of 2018. The infrastructure being built in mid-2019 — from user-friendly exchanges to institutional-grade custody solutions — would prove foundational to the crypto industry’s next major growth phase.
Regulatory Considerations
Both developments also raised regulatory questions. Bitcoin.com’s exchange would need to navigate an increasingly complex patchwork of international regulations, particularly as U.S. authorities like the CFTC were actively investigating offshore exchanges for serving American customers without proper registration. Meanwhile, Grayscale’s reliance on Coinbase Custody — a New York State Department of Financial Services-regulated entity — represented a bet that regulatory compliance would be the key to unlocking institutional capital.
The contrasting approaches reflected a broader truth about the cryptocurrency industry in 2019: compliance and accessibility were no longer mutually exclusive goals, but achieving both required significant investment in infrastructure, security, and regulatory engagement.
Why This Matters
The events of August 2, 2019, illustrate a critical inflection point in cryptocurrency market development. Bitcoin.com’s exchange launch signaled that retail-focused platforms were maturing beyond simple wallets into full-service trading ecosystems, while Grayscale’s custody arrangement with Coinbase demonstrated that the institutional infrastructure for digital assets was becoming robust enough to handle billions of dollars in assets. For investors, these developments represented growing confidence that the cryptocurrency market could support both retail participation and institutional-scale investment — a duality that would define the industry’s trajectory through the bull runs of 2020 and 2021.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.