Coinbase has registered as a VASP in France

Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) says it has successfully registered as a virtual asset service provider (VASP) in France. Its shares are up 4.0% on Thursday.

Coinbase expands into another key market

The said approval from AMF effectively enables Coinbase to offer its digital currency services to people of la République.

In October, the Nasdaq-listed firm had picked Ireland as its primary regulatory hub in the European Union. And now it’s expanding into another key market in that region as U.S. regulators remain unrelenting towards crypto companies.

Note that Ledger – one of the world’s largest crypto custody services provider that was last valued at about $1.4 billion is headquartered in France.

Peers including Crypto.com, Binance, and Circle have also picked Paris as their European base.

EU is trying to introduce its MiCA regulation

Note that the European Union is currently working to institute its MiCA (Markets in Crypto Assets) regulation.

Once that’s in place, registering as a virtual asset service provider in one of the European countries will enable crypto companies to operate in the entire region instead of having to secure the license separately for each member of the bloc.

The news arrives more than a month after Coinbase reported its financial results for the third quarter that missed Street estimates as the number of monthly transacting users declined further to 8.5 million.

Its shares have still quintupled this year on the back of optimism related to the impending approval of SEC for a Bitcoin Spot ETF.