Coinbase and affiliates have taken the lead on introducing a legal framework for blockchain tokens as a security; on Wednesday they released a 27-page framework for regulation and best practices for blockchain tokens; paper provides a risk score measurement, best practices for token sales and a detailed securities law analysis. Source
San Francisco-based Coinbase has received approval for digital currency trading of Ether and Litecoin in New York; the company was also granted approval for a debit card service called Shift Card; with the approval, Maria Vullo and the the New York State Department of Financial Services reiterated their position on the OCC's fintech charter, noting the importance for state fintech oversight. Source
Coinbase announced a new customer support like to help users and expand customer service operations; according to Business Insider the call agents can only handle verification issues and unlocking accounts; the company has seen their user base skyrocket but at the same time the amount of issues and complaints have also gone up dramatically; adding more support is something they hope will help to provide an overall better experience. Source.
Coinbase built the platform, Coinbase Custody, to serve investors like hedge funds and family offices; "We are designing Coinbase Custody to meet the needs of institutional clients," Armstrong said in a Medium post as reported by Business Insider; the features include account representatives and support, multi-user accounts and insurance in some cases. Source.
Coinbase has been the top cryptocurrency exchange for the US market as it’s process makes signing up and buying bitcoin simple; they have seen accounts jump from 5.5 million to more than 13 million in less than a year; their success has not been without growing pains with a number of outages occurring and customers lodging complaints that no one was available to help them; recently they also came to an agreement with the IRS to hand over records of customers involving more than $20,000 which was a compromise from a year long battle. Source.
Bitcoin market exchange CoinBase has received licensing from the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) to expand its business to New York; the bitcoin licensing process involved analysis of the company's anti-money laundering, capitalization, consumer protection and cyber security policies; along with CoinBase, the New York DFS approved four additional firms for virtual currency business operations including licenses for XRP II and Circle Internet Financial, and charters for Gemini Trust Company and itBit Trust Company. Source
Coinbase has raised $100 million in a Series D funding round led by IVP; firm has exchanged over $25 billion of digital currency and plans to use the funding for expanding its business operations; the company currently has three main products: Coinbase for retail digital currency trading, GDAX for institutional and professional digital currency trading, and Toshi a browser for the Ethereum network. Source
In a blog on the company’s website David Farmer, Director of Communications, explained the ability for customers to instantly purchase digital currency using a US bank account; customers can now buy up to $25,000 and receive access to their digital currency immediately. Source.
Coinbase was ordered to hand over information on customers who made transactions over $20,000 between 2013 and 2015; the IRS believes people have not been correctly reporting income made from trades; the information required by the IRS was significantly less than they originally tried to get back when the IRS initially summoned records a year ago; Coinbase might still challenge the order. Source.
Coinbase now supports bitcoin cash and is looking into whether employees took advantage of the launch; employees may have been able to profit as they knew it was about to be added on Coinbase. Source
