Coinbase Making Moves
Coinbase has been a formidable force in the American cryptocurrency marketplace for some time. Recently, the company has been making numerous moves after Robinhood, an online marketplace for traditional stocks, had announced their “fee-less” trading platform. In the past few weeks, Coinbase has been ramping up to put it’s mark on cryptocurrency going forward for 2018.
High-Caliber Hire
Early March, Coinbase made a high-caliber hire of Emilie Choi from LinkedIn. Being the former head of acquisitions, Emilie brings years of experience to be Coinbase’s new VP of business development. This is extremely pivotal for Coinbase as it has been operating solely as a marketplace without making the moves to scale operations or pursue acquisitions within this relatively new space.
Cipher Acquisition - Browser Development
It is rarely known to the public that Coinbase has been working on a secret project called “Toshi”. Toshi aims to be an internet browser aimed to be deployed on the blockchain with implications of decentralized applications and privacy features. In continuation of this, Coinbase recently acquired the Cipher Browser team who had been working on a very similar product. With Toshi and Cipher’s new teams working on a browser together, you can expect a decentralized browser built by Coinbase to be on your radar very soon. With this acquisition, Cipher’s founder Peter Kim will now be the head of engineering on Toshi alongside Coinbase’s product lead Sid Coelho-Prabhu.
Earn.com Acquisition - Earn.com
Although Earn.com wasn’t Coinbase’s first acquisition, critics are saying it is the first “real” merger due to the amount of talent it brings to Coinbase. With a deal that is roughly around 100 million dollars, Coinbase acquired Earn.com and high-caliber talents like Balaji Srinivasan, a well-regarded ex-Andressen Horowitz partner. Balaji will be come Coinbase’s CTO in lieu of raising it’s C-suite in 2018. Earn.com’s merger also brings the product into Coinbase, a feature similar to BitBounce of having blind emailers pay a certain price in order for the user to open the email.
Final Thoughts
Coinbase had its plate full for Q1 and they look unstoppable with the most recent moves. In a market that is high-paced with talent flocking for a piece in this space, Coinbase is setting itself up for success on not only expanding their own popular place, but also providing other products to complete the entire suite. 2018 will be an exciting year for blockchain technology and we cannot wait to see what Coinbase has in store next.
Cheers
The Blockchain Musketeers