According to John O’Loghlen, the exchange’s Asia-Pacific Managing Director, Coinbase is targeting Australia’s self-managed pensions sector with a new service.
This move comes as self-managed pension funds in Australia have increasingly invested in cryptocurrencies since March 2019. Particularly, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) reveals that almost $1 billion AUD ($664 million USD) is now invested in crypto, a significant rise from $197 million AUD in December 2019. However, thousands of Australians who hold self-managed pension funds to bet on crypto have even lost millions of dollars, Reuters reported in March 2023.
“Self-managed super funds might just make a single allocation, set it and forget it,” O’Loghlen said. “We are working on an offering to service those clients really well on a one-off basis—to have them trade with us and stay with us.”
Crypto interests in the self-managed pensions sector is partly due to the recent approval of spot-ETFs in the U.S. and the potential for similar approvals in Australia this year.
“We don’t see this as cannibalising the ETF players, but more a rising tide and a big enough interest for someone to come in through their own self-managed portal,” said O’Loghlen.