Bitcoin exchange Coinbase is reported to have brought in more than $1bn in revenues this past year; according to a report in Recode the revenue figures for Coinbase were supposed to be $600mn but the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas pushed them to over $1bn; the company has also seen spikes in users, with more than 100,000 users signing in over the Thanksgiving day weekend. Source.
Dozens of Coinbase users were complaining on Reddit regarding unexpected charges on their credit and debit cards; Worldpay and Visa issued a joint statement saying the issue was not cause by Coinbase; the Financial Times reports that the source of the problem was still not clear though it did seem related to merchant category codes that were assigned to Coinbase; the issues bring up concerns that regulators have been discussing, rules around the new digital currencies are not clear. Source.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been hit with a class action lawsuit that alleges insider trading during their launch of bitcoin cash; the plaintiffs are accusing the exchange of tipping off insiders prior to the official launch; prices of bitcoin cash spiked ahead of the launch and Coinbase did say they would conduct an investigation into the matter, plaintiffs claim the results have yet to be revealed. Source.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority has granted Coinbase an E-Money License; Barclays is also allowing Coinbase to access the UK’s Faster Payments Scheme which is the core payment infrastructure in the UK; Coinbase’s Zeeshan Feroz stated, “There is no other exchange today that has access to domestic banking. UK consumers today have to jump through all sorts of hoops around sending money to European accounts using euros in order to get money in and out." Source
According to Bloomberg, Ripple attempted to provide financial incentives to exchanges Gemini and Coinbase for its XRP cryptocurrency to be listed; Some believe that the exchanges are reluctant to include XRP because the token could be deemed securities because it is controlled by one single company; the article by Bloomberg shares that a Ripple executive offered a $1 million cash payment to Gemini which was followed by other incentive offerings; Ripple also offered lending Coinbase $100 million of XRP to let users trade the asset. Source
Coinbase launched their Coinbase Commerce platform to allow merchants to accept digital currency; the service will be integrated into the merchant’s checkout or added as a payment option; the company is accepting merchants by having them email in to be added; this positions Coinbase well as Stripe no longer accepts payments and PayPal has been slow to adopt. Source.
Business Insider sat with Coinbase’s Dan Romero who recently took on the role of general manager and vice president of the company in January; the interview covered the company’s plans for growth on the engineering and product sides; he said the company is looking to become for cryptocurrency what Google has become for search; the interview also talks through the recent SegWit upgrade, where Coinbase is headed in the next few years and how they compare to their biggest competitors. Source.
The new fund will allow accredited investors to access all of the cryptocurrencies currently on Coinbase; the currencies will be weighted on market capitalization and new cryptocurrencies will automatically be added to the fund; the fund will charge a 2% management fee. Source
Coinbase announced they will add support for ERC20 tokens, the technical standard behind ethereum blockchain tokens; they don’t have plans to add any new token yet but is building out their technology to do so; "This is an infrastructure upgrade that will enable us to support many more assets in the future," a Coinbase representative told Business Insider.; the company did caution that they will wait regulatory clarity before adding any assets. Source.
According to a blog post by the company, the fund will provide. ”financing to promising early stage companies that have the teams and ideas that can move the space forward in a positive, meaningful way”; the company also said it will not invest in security tokens at this time; it is likely that the company is sitting on significant amounts of cash which put it in a good position to launch a fund; revenues in 2017 totaled over $1 billion; Bloomberg reported that the top ten largest crypto exchanges take in $3 million in fees per day. Source