Coinbase, one of the longest serving exchanges in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, is expanding its services across Latin America and Southeast Asia.

As a result of the expansion, cryptocurrency enthusiasts in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile, India, Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Zealand will now be able to access the company’s crypto-to-crypto trading services.

The expansion means Coinbase is now available to customers in 53 countries.

In December last year, Coinbase expanded its services into Andorra, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Lithuania, and Iceland.

Today’s news comes approximately a week after the San Francisco-based company announced the launch of a cryptocurrency debit card in the UK, following well-documented criticism in the aftermath of its Neutrino acquisition several weeks ago.

Did you know? Hard Fork has its own stage at TNW2019 , our tech conference in Amsterdam. Check it out .

We’re hosting a pitch battle at Hard Fork Decentralized

We’re inviting blockchain and cryptocurrency startups, projects, and organizations to battle it out. Our blockchain and cryptocurrency event, Hard Fork Decentralized, is taking place in London on December 12-14.

Together with our lineup of speakers (including Thomas Power, Kavita Gupta, and Mustafa Al-Bassam) we’ll be answering the unanswered questions about the industry – from scalability to diversity, and everything in between.

The concept is simple: leading industry companies will host their own ‘decentralized’ events, all across the city. One of the them is TNW’s very own Hard Fork Pitch Battle , taking place on December 12 at 4:30pm. Applications are now open !

At our decentralized event, we’re selecting ten blockchain startups, projects, and organizations to pitch in front of an audience full of journalists, investors, and traders. The event is powered by Cointelligence, who have an impartial and accurate ICO rating system , and the Financial Times .

The winner will not only receive new opportunities to further their business but will also win two startup tickets and an exhibition booth at TNW’s flagship conference in May!

The Pitch Battle will be split into two competitions:

Best pre-sale project

Criteria:

Raising, or planning to raise funding via private pre-sale

Best post-funding (pre-sale/ICO/STO) project

Criteria:

Raised funding via pre-sale, ICO, STO

Round closed October 2017 or later

Each company will have three minutes (max. five presentation slides) to convince the jury that their project is the most innovative.

Our judges are:

Stefan Heilmann (CEO at Investment Banking Group)

Tomer Federman (CEO at Federman Capital)

Jonathan Galea (Founder of Blockchain Advisory)

Kavita Gupta (Founding Managing Partner at Consensys)

On Yavin (CEO at Cointelligence)

Think you’ve got what it takes? Apply now – applications close on December 5!

See you in London.

SEC investigates tea company whose stock rose 500% after adding blockchain to its name

Long Island Tea Corp. – no, wait, Long Blockchain Corp. – might have to put an end to their name-changing adventures as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has served them with subpoena, Bloomberg reports .

Information on the reasons behind the subpoena remains sparse, but the company has been asked to provide further regulatory documents to the SEC.

Despite having nothing to do with the technology, Long Island Tea Corp changed their name to Long Blockchain Corp in December 2017. It might seem like a minor thing, but the change caused the company’s share price to jump from under $5 million to near $70 million in a matter of days.

This is not the first time the Long Island-based tea company has gotten in trouble recently. Indeed, Nasdaq previously threatened to delist the company.

It appears its issues with the SEC this time have to do with its recent plans to restructure its business. The company founded a new subsidiary called Stran Loyalty Group, which plans to offer loyalty card, incentive and reward schemes

“The company is fully cooperating with the SEC’s investigation,” a representative for the Long Island company said. “The company cannot predict or determine whether any proceeding may be instituted by the SEC in connection with the subpoena or the outcome of any proceeding that may be instituted.”

This is likely to be a story that will develop over the coming weeks and months, but right now, it shows the power of the blockchain hype. But with the SEC getting busy, it appears the days of capitalizing on blockchain as a buzzword are numbered.