Applications Of Cryptoassets Led Coinbase To The Unicorn Club
We talk about a new era of technology where the Internet has made our lives pretty easier. The modern technologies and types of equipment have been beneficial to our medical, educational and industrial systems as well. But, it is high time we put a little attention to our financial system.
The world is changing but the subject, that is, mankind is constant. Since time immemorial humans have improvised the world. Speaking of the modernization in our financial system, the major population is not familiar with the concept of cryptoassets.
Defining cryptoassets is similar to introducing one to a whole new financial world. They are nothing but digital assets with the implementation of cryptographic techniques. There are no central parties to monitor any transaction. Coinbase is a company based on such digital assets which made billions over the span of seven years.
Coinbase
Currently, Coinbase is the United Nation’s largest crypto assets exchange. In June 2012, Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam founded the company. Within five years the company hit annual revenue of $ 1 billion. The company’s headquarters is based in San Francisco California.
The main products of Coinbase are Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum and exchange of digital assets. The bitcoin transaction of Coinbase takes place in more than 190 countries worldwide.
Brian Armstrong
Brian Armstrong completed both his Bachelor’s and Masters from Rice University. While he was an undergraduate student in Computer Science he worked as an intern for IBM. He also worked at Deloitte & Touch for five months.
In August 2003, Brian co-founded UniversityTutor.com and in 2011 he joined Airbnb.com as a software engineer. He resigned when he decided to build Coinbase.
Fred Ehrsam
Fred went to Duke University and has a B.S degree in both Computer Science and Economics. He also carried research on Self-assembling DNA Nanostructures from Duke University.
He started off his career as a Trader on GoldmanSachs and worked there for a couple of years. In 2012, he co-founded Coinbase with Brian Armstrong and now serves as the Board of Directors. Fred also co-founded Paradigm in June 2018. He also appeared in Forbes 30 Under 30.
Early History
Back in June 2012, Ben Reeves, co-founder of Blockchain.info was also a part of the founding team of Coinbase. But, due to mismatching of future plans, he left shortly. The company wasn’t in its full form back then. After it participated in the Y Combinator startup incubator program it finally started providing services from October 2012.
Initially, the company launched the service buying and selling bitcoin but who knew it would be a scope of investment in the near future. Once the company sees through it never really had to turn back.
Investments, Growth, and Expansion
The company’s Series A round took place in May 2013. Coinbase raised a funding of $5 million from venture capital firm Union Square Ventures. After a few months, the company again received a funding of $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Ribbit Capital.
The next year Coinbase hit a million users. It also implemented a lot of new things in their systems. Some of them were a vault system for secure bitcoin storage and secured insurance for the bitcoin stored in the company’s server.
In 2015, the company received a funding of $75 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, New York Stock Exchange, etc. 2017 was a big year for Coinbase as it received the BitLicense. The company was given legal permission to trade in Ethereum and Litecoin. On 5th April 2018, the company formed Coinbase Ventures to invest in companies with similar grounds of interest.
Coinbase Ventures made its first investment on May 20 on Compound Labs.
Acquisitions and Partnerships
Coinbase made its first acquisitions in 2014. It acquired Blockr, blockchain explorer service and Kippt, a web bookmarking company. In the same year, the company came into joint ventures with Overstock, Dell, Expedia, etc. The company also made a deal with PayPal, Braintree and, Stripe which allowed users bitcoin payment.
Recently, Coinbase has acquired a company called Neutrino. The company was acquired for an undisclosed amount. A lot of questions have been coming up since then. Some information came up regarding Neutrino’s founders having a connection with the Hacking Team. Hacking Team is a Milan based company that sells information to the government and clearly has a poor human rights record.
In August 2019, the company announced a hacking attack. A questionable acquisition followed by a hacking attack has clearly put the users in a dilemma. But, Coinbase declared that nothing was compromised and everything is secure.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more