Coinbase Revives Margin Trading, With Conservative (for Crypto) 3x Leverage

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., is getting back into the business of lending money to traders, joining a growing roster of venues providing leverage to help users juice investment returns.

The San Francisco-based exchange said Wednesday in a blog post its new “margin trading” feature provides leverage up to three times or “3x” for individual investors in 23 U.S. states. The leverage is also available to institutional traders in 44 states and nine countries.

The 3x leverage matches Coinbase’s previous margin offering from 2017. Coinbase, led by CEO Brian Armstrong, briefly offered margin trading at the time, but suspended the service later in the year. Executives had been signaling since early 2019 that they were considering reviving the effort.

The resurgent push by Coinbase comes as competition heats up among the world’s crypto exchanges and the biggest players are scrambling to attract customers and transaction volumes with new digital-token…