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Posted on August 10, 2017Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
We are excited to announce that Coinbase has raised $100 million in Series D funding. This represents a major milestone for our mission to create an open financial system for the world. The round was led by IVP, with participation from Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32 and Draper Associates.
Coinbase experienced unprecedented growth over the last year, and we have now exchanged over $25 billion USD of digital currency for our customers. We’ll be using this new funding to continue scaling even further. Specifically, we will:
- Increase the size of our engineering and customer support teams to improve the customer experience.
- Open a GDAX office in New York City, further investing in our ability to serve institutions and professional traders.
- Invest in Toshi, to help accelerate digital currency’s shift from speculative investment to global payment network.
We’re fortunate to be working with IVP, one of the premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms in the United States. Founded in 1980, IVP has invested in over 300 companies, 106 of which have gone public. Notable IVP investments include companies such as Dropbox, Netflix, Twitter, Slack, and Snap.
Coinbase was founded in 2012 and has grown to become one the world’s leading digital currency companies with support for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin in 32 countries. Today it is a portfolio of three products:
- Coinbase — the most popular retail exchange for digital currency
- GDAX — the most popular exchange for institutions and professional traders in the U.S.
- Toshi — a browser for the Ethereum network
Digital currencies are having their “Netscape” moment. The pace of innovation has been accelerating and we are now seeing exciting projects and companies being built on top of digital currencies. We’re beginning to transition into phase three of our secret master plan.
If this mission excites you, we’re looking to fill many new roles. Send us a note!
You can sign up for Coinbase and Toshi to start using digital currency today.
Finally, if you’re a institution or professional trader, you can sign up for GDAX.
Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on August 9, 2017Coinbase Launches “View Balance” Integration with Fidelity
We’re excited to announce that Fidelity customers can now view their Coinbase digital asset balances as part of their portfolio hosted on Fidelity.com.
Fidelity is one of the largest global financial services corporations, with 9 million households using its retail brokerage services. Earlier this year, Fidelity began testing the view balance feature with employees who own digital assets on Coinbase. During testing, Fidelity found strong internal support for the partnership and ability to view digital asset holdings within their portfolio.
This integration demonstrates the continued commitment of traditional financial institutions to adopt digital assets and widen access for customers. As the awareness of digital assets grows, Fidelity is making it easier for customers to easily monitor their digital asset holdings alongside the rest of their investments.
To connect your Coinbase account to Fidelity, visit www.Fidelity.com or call 1–800-FIDELITY
If you don’t have a Coinbase account, sign up for one here.
Coinbase Launches “View Balance” Integration with Fidelity was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on August 3, 2017Update on Bitcoin Cash
We wanted to give our customers an update on the recent Bitcoin hard fork. You can read more about what a digital currency fork is here.
Forks enable innovation and improvements to digital currency and we believe that we will see an increasing number of forks in the future. We expect this to be a vibrant and innovative community.
When a digital currency forks, it creates a new digital asset. Adding new digital assets to Coinbase must be approached with caution. Not every asset is immediately safe to add to Coinbase from a technical stability, security, or compliance point of view.
Our top priority is the safety of customer funds and we spend extensive time designing, building, testing and auditing our systems to ensure that the digital assets we support remain safe and secure. We may not always be first in adding an asset, but if we do, you can be sure that we’ve invested significant time and care into supporting it securely. We believe this is the best approach for us to maintain customer trust.
In the case of bitcoin cash, we made clear to our customers that we did not feel we could safely support it on the day it was launched. For customers who wanted immediate access to their bitcoin cash, we advised them to withdraw their bitcoin from the Coinbase platform. However, there are several points we want to make clear for our customers:
- Both bitcoin and bitcoin cash remain safely stored on Coinbase.
- Customers with balances of bitcoin at the time of the fork now have an equal quantity of bitcoin cash stored by Coinbase.
- We operate by the general principle that our customers should benefit to the greatest extent possible from hard forks or other unexpected events.
Over the last several days, we’ve examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers. We made this decision based on factors such as the security of the network, customer demand, trading volumes, and regulatory considerations.
We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time.
Once supported, customers will be able to withdraw bitcoin cash. We’ll make a determination at a later date about adding trading support. In the meantime, customer bitcoin cash will remain safely stored on Coinbase.
Update on Bitcoin Cash was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on August 2, 2017A new Coinbase accounts experience
Faster management and simplified deposits
Today, we’re excited to roll out a new way to manage Coinbase accounts. We’ve given the entire experience a refresh that creates the simplest, most intuitive interface to buy, sell and store digital currency. Try it out at coinbase.com/accounts.
Access all accounts from a single page
Previously, there were different pages needed in order to manage different accounts, a frustrating experience for customers that manage multiple currencies. With the new design, customers can now check account balances and see recent transactions for every account on a single page, along with deposits and withdrawals.
Improved wire and SEPA deposits
We’ve updated the fiat deposit flow for customers using wire payments or SEPA deposits to help get funds into Coinbase more quickly and reliably. In the new deposit flow walks, customers can easily walk through each required step to ensure transfer information is accurately recorded.
Real-time everything
Last but not least, we’ve made every part of the account experience real-time. As customers make deposits, sends, buys, or sells, the activity will instantly appear in our new account page.
Over the coming days, we’ll be rolling out these updates to all customers. If you don’t have a Coinbase account yet you can sign up at coinbase.com (or try the mobile app).
Jesse Pollak is the Engineering Manager on the Brokerage team, building Coinbase.com. If you’re excited about cryptocurrencies, we’re hiring!
If you have questions, concerns, or feedback — reach out to us on Twitter at @CoinbaseSupport.
A new Coinbase accounts experience was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 27, 2017Update for customers with bitcoin stored on Coinbase
This post explains what customers can expect from Coinbase in the event of a split (or fork) in the Bitcoin network. You can read more about what a digital currency fork is here.
Our first priority is the safety of customer funds. In the event of a fork, customer fiat currency (USD, EUR and GBP) and digital currencies (bitcoin, ether and litecoin) are safe.
On August 1st, 2017 there is a proposal to make changes to the bitcoin software. This proposal, known as Bitcoin Cash, is likely to create a fork in the Bitcoin network. This means that after August 1st, 2017 there are likely to be two versions of the Bitcoin blockchain and two separate digital currencies.
In the event of two separate blockchains after August 1, 2017 we will only support one version. We have no plans to support the Bitcoin Cash fork. We have made this decision because it is hard to predict how long the alternative version of bitcoin will survive and if Bitcoin Cash will have future market value.
This means if there are two separate digital currencies — bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) — customers with Bitcoin stored on Coinbase will only have access to the current version of bitcoin we support (BTC). Customers will not have access to, or be able to withdraw, bitcoin cash (BCC).
Customers who wish to access both bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) need to withdraw bitcoin stored on Coinbase before 11.59 pm PT July 31, 2017. If you do not wish to access bitcoin cash (BCC) then no action is required.
We plan to temporarily suspend bitcoin buy / sells, deposits and withdrawals on August 1, 2017 as the fork is likely to cause disruption to the bitcoin network. This means your funds will be safe but you will be unable to access your bitcoin (BTC) for a short period of time.
We will keep you updated on this event through our blog, status page and twitter.
Update for customers with bitcoin stored on Coinbase was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on July 27, 2017What is a Bitcoin fork?
There has been significant news coverage and developments in recent weeks about changes to digital currency networks. These are sometimes called “forks”. We wanted to provide a simple, non-technical explanation to add context to recent discussions (previous blog posts here and here).
What is a “fork”?
A “fork” is a change to the software of the digital currency that creates two separate versions of the blockchain with a shared history.
Forks can be temporary, lasting for a few minutes, or can be a permanent split in the network creating two separate versions of the blockchain. When this happens, two different digital currencies are also created.
Why are changes made to digital currency protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum?
Coinbase currently supports 3 digital currencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Each of these digital currencies use open-source software protocols with independent development teams responsible for changes and improvements to the network, much in the same way that changes to internet protocols allow web browsing to become better over time.
Our mission is to create an open financial system for the world and we believe digital currencies will be fundamental in achieving this mission. However, many of these digital currencies are still in early development. Making improvements to the software — such as the number of transactions the network can support — is crucial to creating finance 2.0.
Why do forks happen?
There are a few reasons why a fork can happen. For example, when a change is proposed to a digital currency protocol, users need to show their support for the new version and upgrade — in a similar way to people regularly update applications on their computer. In order for these changes to get approved many people need to agree, just as changes to cellphone networks require many phone companies to agree.
What does this mean if I have digital currency stored on Coinbase?
Coinbase actively monitors protocol developments and works hard to ensure customer funds are safe in these events. Our policy is to support only one version of a digital currency. In order to determine which fork to support we look at factors such as size of the network, market value and customer demand. We make this decision carefully because safely supporting a new digital currency requires significant work for many teams.
We will keep users informed about these events through our blog, status page, twitter and supported assets page.
What is a Bitcoin fork? was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on June 21, 2017In Q3 we’re focusing on the fundamentals
Coinbase and GDAX have been going through some incredible growth.
Our original plan was to focus on adding new features in Q3 (new assets, trading features, etc). But the growth has brought it’s own set of challenges. So we regrouped last week and decided this quarter it would be best to focus on the fundamentals.
What does this mean? It means operational excellence, scaling, and providing a better customer experience, including…
- Rebuilding pieces of our backend
- Focusing on uptime and reliability
- Scaling customer support and providing faster response times
- Improving the customer experience
- Hiring and on-boarding a lot more people
- Training more managers
We’ll measure these with a handful of metrics (net promoter score, apdex, recruiting funnel etc), create a clear owner for each, and review progress at every all hands meeting.
This industry is moving fast, and it’s tempting to continue adding more and more features at a breakneck pace. But we’ve become a core piece of infrastructure in this industry, and we need to scale with it as it grows. This solid foundation will allow digital currency to keep growing and help create the next wave of adoption.
I’m incredibly proud of the team, who have been working overtime to rise to this challenge. We’re looking to fill dozens of new roles by the end of this year. After focusing on the fundamentals this quarter, we can resume a more balanced approach and continue adding new features in Q4.
In Q3 we’re focusing on the fundamentals was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on June 14, 2017Kathryn Haun Joins Coinbase Board of Directors
We are excited to announce former federal prosecutor Kathryn Haun has joined our parent company Board of Directors. Kathryn’s experience and diverse range of skills will be crucial to Coinbase as we continue to be seen as the safest, most trusted place to buy digital currencies through our commitment to government regulations and compliance.
Kathryn was most recently a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice and its first-ever Digital Currency coordinator. As a federal prosecutor, she has served as lead counsel in numerous jury trials, with a focus on financial fraud, cybercrime, digital currency, national security, gangs, and murders. She also held a significant role in the case of two federal agents’ role in the investigation into Silk Road.
As Coinbase has continued to grow from a wallet to a retail and institutional exchange, our focus has remained on our role as a regulated business and what that means for our customers. We have seen great value in proactively working with governments, banks, and regulators around the world to educate them about digital currency, and Kathryn brings strong expertise to help us drive these conversations forward.
Kathryn taught Stanford Law School’s first-ever course on Digital Currency and Cybercrime with cross-enrollment from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford’s Computer Science Department.
If you don’t have a Coinbase account, sign up here!
Kathryn Haun Joins Coinbase Board of Directors was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on June 6, 2017Improving Customer Support
Over the past few months, we’ve seen an unprecedented increase in the number of customers signing up to use Coinbase (4x since January 2017). As a result, our systems have been pushed to the limit. This has caused many customers to have a negative experience.
I’m writing today to apologize for the experience you’re having and tell you what we’re doing to improve the situation.
First, it’s worth acknowledging the gravity of the situation. Our goal with Coinbase is to build the product that is the most trusted and easiest to use in the space. It erodes trust when customers can’t get a timely response to customer support inquiries, or when there are delays in pay ins, pay outs, limit increase requests, or getting access to your account.
We’re storing customer funds, and I can understand how incredibly frustrating (and scary) it is when an issue arises and you can’t get a prompt response.
We haven’t done enough to keep up with the growth, and we’re taking steps now to correct it. I want to share with you specifically what we’re doing to improve the situation.
Near Term:
- We are doubling overall support capacity by spinning up an outsourced support facility by the end of June. This will allow us to rapidly add level 1 support agents during future surges.
- We’re hiring 10 new contractors for our in house team over the next 3 months.
- We’re adding new hires on the Trust team (part of the engineering org that helps deal with security questions).
- Hired a consultant (former VP Customer Success at larger company) to consult on scaling, and how to introduce phone support.
- Several account security improvements are rolling out, including improvements to our two factor authentication, and a new system to flag risky withdrawals.
Q3 Plan
- Goal will be < 6 hours first response time for everyone; < 2 hours in cases of large balances
- Goal of having first version of phone support introduced for high balance accounts, and/or security related questions by end of September
Q4 Plan
- Roll out phone support for a wider % of customer base (potentially a paid option, still TBD)
- Introduce additional account security options such as Yubikey support
We understand that trust has to be earned, not given, and that we haven’t done enough lately to earn that trust. Thank you for your support as we continue to scale.
Thank you!
Improving Customer Support was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on May 31, 2017Europe, the next chapter
We opened our doors to users in Europe back in 2014. Since then, we have steadily seen our user base grow and the last 6 months have been our strongest ever. The United Kingdom is our fastest growing market with Switzerland, Spain and France close behind.
So, we’re taking the next step in our transition to a truly global organisation. We have big plans for the year ahead. I’ll be providing regular updates here as we build out our European product. To kick things off, we are announcing the opening of a new office in London. This will serve as the hub for our European operations and help us better service our customers. The teams based here, will focus on delivering an experience that is native to countries we support.
Here is what you can expect in the next 12 months:
- Better localisation — We’ll be improving the UX, starting with the onboarding experience. Expect support for more fiat currencies and languages to follow.
- Local payment methods — We’ll be adding alternative payment methods, making it easier to add and withdraw funds from your Coinbase account.
- Customer support — We are making a significant investment in customer support. Expect quicker response times and support in local timezones.
This is only the start and we are all incredibly excited by the potential digital currencies have to grow in Europe. Watch this space!
Sign up for a Coinbase account here.
We also have some exciting updates for EU users of GDAX, find out more here.
Europe, the next chapter was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
