THE COINBASE EFFECT

Founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, this humble startup has

taken the world of cryptocurrency by storm and has grown into King Midas of
crypto . As of March 2021, it was largest cryptocurrency exchange in the
United States (by trading volume). It has established itself as the best in
cryptoasset exchange, it’s end goal is ambitious: to create a new, open
financial system. For what it’s worth, there seems to be some merit to their
claims, Coinbase has never been hacked and has tirelessly works to comply
with the existing rules and regulations, which puts it on the good side of law,
which is a enormous advantage in a field lacking regulations. But currently, it is
still seen as traditional financial services provider. Coinbase is the leading
choice among investors due to it’s ease of use, excellent security and
regulations and attracts many new investors. As the astonishing growth of
Bitcoin in the past decade, Coinbase grew almost parallelly and has firmly
established itself in the sector. It earlier marketed itself as the path to the
future of money but now encourages its users to buy and sell digital currency.
It seems that Coinbase has taken advantage of the rising tide of the
exponential growth in popularity of bitcoin and trading of cryptocurrency. This
shift in its message has been favourable and was a contributing factor in its
growth in 2017, when in November it was adding 100,000 new users every
day. Acknowledging all that has been said above, an unavoidable question
comes to mind, is Coinbase merely riding the wave of the bitcoin frenzy, or is it
working on the original to reach its earlier ultimate ambition: an open, global
financial system? The answer, probably both. Bitcoin is still perceived as a way
for young 20 something professionals to make quick money or to supplement
their income. It has not yet broken into the mainstream financial sector. But
that is not it, Bitcoin is still growing and has branched out into Bitcoin cash
which provides smaller blocks thus enabling more transactions. While it may
still take some time, Coinbase has certainly made strides toward of vision of a
open, global financial system.