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Tag: coinbase

  • Google Cloud Partners With Coinbase to Enable Crypto Payments and Web3 Innovation

    Google Cloud Partners With Coinbase to Enable Crypto Payments and Web3 Innovation

    Google Cloud will soon let customers pay with crypto thanks to a new partnership with Coinbase.

    As part of the partnership between the two companies, “Coinbase will use Google Cloud’s powerful compute platform to process blockchain data at scale.” Coinbase will also benefit from Google’s fiber-optic network, using the speed of the service to help power machine-learning crypto insights.

    Google plans to allow select customers to pay for cloud services via crypto, with customers in the Web3 space being given the opportunity first.

    “We are excited Google Cloud has selected Coinbase to help bring Web3 to a new set of users and provide powerful solutions to developers,” said Brian Armstrong, Co-founder and CEO of Coinbase. “With more than 100 million verified users and 14,500 institutional clients, Coinbase has spent more than a decade building industry-leading products on top of blockchain technology. We could not ask for a better partner to help execute our vision of building a trusted bridge into the Web3 ecosystem.”

    “We want to make building in Web3 faster and easier, and this partnership with Coinbase helps developers get one step closer to that goal,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “We’re proud Coinbase has chosen Google Cloud as its strategic cloud partner, and we’re ready to serve the thriving global Web3 customer and partner ecosystem. Our focus is making it frictionless for all customers to take advantage of our scalability, reliability, security, and data services, so they can focus on innovation in the Web3 space.”

  • Coinbase Notifications Were AWOL During Crypto Crash

    Coinbase Notifications Were AWOL During Crypto Crash

    Coinbase notifications were noticeably AWOL during the crypto crash, just when users needed them most.

    Coinbase is known for sending email alerts to some users when the price of their watched cryptocurrencies rises or falls. Unfortunately, according to Mother Jones, those alerts stopped right as the market was crashing — and right when users may have been able to benefit from them most.

    According to various legal experts and academics, Coinbase’s actions may not have been entirely legal. The issue stems from Coinbase initially sending some users notification emails, providing information when cryptocurrency prices rose and fell, and then apparently halting those emails without notifying users. It’s possible, even likely, that many crypto users may have lost money because they did not receive alerts.

    “It’s potentially illegal,” Matthew Bruckner, an associate professor at Howard University who specializes in business law, told Mother Jones. “It could be unfair to do this, to sort of induce people to rely on the email alerts,” adding that it could be an even bigger issue if people lost money as a result of the alerts being halted.

    “This seems straight up deceptive,” he said. “They said we’ll email you price alerts and then stopped doing it without saying they were [going to stop].”

    Bruckner cautioned that it’s still too early, with too little information, to make a definitive assessment. But the situation certainly raises questions about Coinbase’s decision-making process. If the company’s decision can be linked to losses, however, it could potentially open Coinbase to legal liability.

    “It seems plausible that they could have caused damages by inducing users to stop using other methods of checking prices by introducing emailed price alerts, and then taking them away,” Bruckner added.

    Coinbase provided a statement to Mother Jones, implying the company was testing the alerts to a segment of their user base with a view to rolling the final feature out to all customers once the feedback and lessons from the pilot program were incorporated.

    “We began testing email notifications for some users in January, and have since rolled out email notifications for all interested users,” Coinbase spokesperson Crystal Yang said in an emailed statement.

  • Coinbase Lets International Users Earn Interest on Crypto

    Coinbase has announced that it will let international users earn interest on their crypto holdings.

    The company had originally planned on introducing Lend, a feature that would have enabled US customers to lend their crypto and earn interest. After threats from the SEC, Coinbase abandoned the plans.

    Coinbase is now offering a similar service to international customers, a market outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.

    Today we’re introducing a new way for Coinbase’s global customers to put their crypto to work and earn yield. We are making DeFi more accessible, enabling eligible customers in more than 70 countries to access the attractive yields of DeFi from their Dai with no fees, lockups, or set-up hassle.

    Starting today, you’ll be able to earn DeFi yield on Dai, a stablecoin that is designed to be pegged to the US Dollar.

    There is no word on when, or if, DeFi Yield will come to US customers.

  • Larry Ellison Touts Oracle Cloud’s Reliability in Wake of AWS Outage

    Larry Ellison Touts Oracle Cloud’s Reliability in Wake of AWS Outage

    Larry Ellison isn’t passing up an opportunity to take a swipe at AWS, sharing a note from a telecommunications customer touting Oracle Cloud’s reliability.

    AWS suffered a major outage earlier this week, impacting some of the biggest sites on the web. Coinbase, Disney+, McDonald’s and Amazon’s own Alexa service were just a few of the brands affected.

    Ellison is all too happy to point out Oracle’s reputation for reliability, sharing a note from a telecommunications client at the end of the company’s quarterly earnings call, according to CNBC.

    “Let me close with a note that I’m going to paraphrase from a very large telecommunications company who uses our cloud and all the other three North American clouds — Google, Amazon and Microsoft,” Ellison said. “And the note basically said the one thing we’ve noticed about Oracle, Oracle’s cloud, is that it never ever goes down. We can’t say that about any of the other clouds. We think this is a critical differentiator.”

    Despite not being in the top three cloud providers, Oracle has consistently won praise for offering a full turnkey solution, providing everything from cloud infrastructure to database-driven services. If the company can make the case for better reliability than the top three, it may be able to continue chipping away at their market share.

  • AWS Issue Causing Major Outages

    AWS Issue Causing Major Outages

    An issue with AWS is impacting a large swath of the internet, with multiple companies experiencing issues.

    As the world’s largest cloud provider, AWS helps power some of the web’s biggest names. Unfortunately, that also means an issue with AWS can impact a large number of other companies and services.

    That appears to be happening today, with Disney+, PUBG, League of Legends, Coinbase, McDonald’s, Chime, Amazon’s Alexa and others experiencing outages, according to DownDetector.com.

    AWS updated its status page, acknowledging the issue.

    We are seeing impact to multiple AWS APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue is also affecting some of our monitoring and incident response tooling, which is delaying our ability to provide updates. We have identified the root cause and are actively working towards recovery.

  • Coinbase Wants a Dedicated Federal Regulator for Crypto

    Coinbase Wants a Dedicated Federal Regulator for Crypto

    Coinbase is calling on the US government to establish a new regulator for the crypto and digital assets market.

    Coinbase is one of the leading cryptocurrency trading platforms, but it recently ran afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Coinbase was planning a new service called Lend that would allow individuals to loan cryptocurrency to other users, and charge interest for the transactions.

    The SEC warned Coinbase it would sue the company if it proceeded with its plans, sparking a verbal war between the two entities. Coinbase ultimately ended up abandoning Lend under the pressure. In the meantime, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said he doesn’t believe crypto is viable long-term.

    In that environment, it’s not surprising Coinbase is lobbying for a new federal regulator to oversee the crypto market — one that is not Gary Gensler’s SEC. As part of it’s new regulatory framework, Digital Asset Policy Proposal: Safeguarding America’s Financial Leadership (dApp), Coinbase makes its case:

    To avoid fragmented and inconsistent regulatory oversight of these unique and concurrent innovations, responsibility over digital asset markets should be assigned to a single federal regulator.

    Like many countries, the US is grappling with the impact of cryptocurrency and is trying to determine how best to regulate it. Gensler has been making the case that the SEC should have sole authority to do so, a position that has many critics, in addition to Coinbase. It will be interesting to see what direction the US government goes.

  • Coinbase Now Supports Paycheck Deposit to Coinbase Accounts

    Coinbase Now Supports Paycheck Deposit to Coinbase Accounts

    Coinbase is making it easier to fund accounts, allowing users to deposit part of their paycheck directly into their accounts.

    Coinbase is one of the leading cryptocurrency trading platforms, and the company is continually working to make it easier for mainstream users to get started. The latest feature should appeal to new users, as well as veteran traders.

    The company is making it possible for users to deposit all or part of their paycheck, instead of manually funding their accounts.

    “Now, you’ll save time on the extra steps it takes to move money so you can immediately earn interest on your income or earn crypto rewards with your Coinbase Card,” writes Prakash Hariramani, Sr Director, Product. “Plus, you’ll pay zero transaction fees on direct deposit funds⁴ so you have instant and free access to the cryptoeconomy.”

    Coinbase emphasizes that users will have total control over the process.

    “Stay in control of your money by depositing as little or as much of your paycheck as you want,” Hariramani continues. “Get paid in any of the 100+ crypto available on Coinbase or in US Dollars. Choose to get paid in crypto so you can make recurring buys or earn interest on your income (by getting paid in USDC, DAI, or other interest-yielding assets), or choose to get paid in US Dollars to be ready for any trade or to spend with your Coinbase Card.”

  • Coinbase Abandons Lend Feature Amid SEC Pressure

    Coinbase Abandons Lend Feature Amid SEC Pressure

    Coinbase has abandoned its plans for its Lend service after a high-profile scuffle with the SEC.

    Coinbase announced its plans to roll out Lend, a program that would allow users to lend cryptocurrency to others and earn interest on the loan. The SEC took issue with the company’s plans and threatened legal action if it continued. This led Coinbase to engage in what was widely considered an “ill-advised” public war with the SEC, with CEO Brian Armstrong calling the agency’s behavior “sketchy.”

    The company has now notified customers via a blog post that it is canceling its Lend plans as a result of the SEC’s actions.

    Our goal is to create great products for our customers and to advance our mission to increase economic freedom in the world. As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we’ve made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program announced below. We have also discontinued the waitlist for this program as we turn our work to what comes next. We had hundreds of thousands of customers from across the country sign up and we want to thank you all for your interest. We will not stop looking for ways to bring innovative, trusted programs and products to our customers.

  • Coinbase Getting Into ‘Ill-Advised’ War With SEC

    Coinbase is calling out the SEC for what it believes is “sketchy” behavior, but TheStreet’s Jim Cramer is not a fan of its strategy.

    The issue involves Coinbase’s crypto lending program, called Lend. The service would allow individuals to lend their crypto assets and earn interest on the loans. Unfortunately, for Coinbase, the SEC seems to have an issue with Lend and has sent the company a Wells Notice.

    “Last Wednesday, after months of effort by Coinbase to engage productively, the SEC gave us what’s called a Wells notice about our planned Coinbase Lend program,” writes Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer, on the company’s blog. “A Wells notice is the official way a regulator tells a company that it intends to sue the company in court. As surprised as we were at the SEC’s threat to sue without ever telling us why, we want to be transparent with you about the course of events leading up to it.”

    CEO Brian Armstrong has gone even further, calling the SEC’s behavior “sketchy.”

    TheStreet’s Jim Cramer believes Armstrong and Coinbase are playing a dangerous game, especially since SEC chair Gary Gensler “taught crypto at MIT,” and has the full weight of a government agency backing him up on his already knowledgable position.

    “[Coinbase] is declaring war against a man who has unlimited firepower,” Cramer said.

  • Coinbase Approves Massive Crypto Investments

    Coinbase Approves Massive Crypto Investments

    Coinbase has announced it will purchase $500M of crypto, and invest 10% of all future profits in crypto.

    Coinbase is one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges, and has some of the best brand-name recognition in the business. The company is going all-in on the technology it facilitates, with both a large one-time investment and a significant ongoing one.

    CEO Brian Armstrong made the announcement via Twitter.

  • Bitcoin Rallies to Highest Price Since May

    Bitcoin Rallies to Highest Price Since May

    Following months of losses, Bitcoin has rallied to its highest point since May.

    Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency market in general, has taken a beating over the last couple of months. Crackdowns by China, as well as environmental concerns, have blunted enthusiasm and sparked concern about crypto’s future.

    Nonetheless, Bitcoin seems to be recovering, reaching $43,000+, according to CoinDesk.

    It remains to be seen if Bitcoin’s rally will continue, but the new price is certainly a welcome sign.

  • Coinbase Closing San Francisco Office, Going 100% Decentralized

    Coinbase Closing San Francisco Office, Going 100% Decentralized

    Coinbase has announced it is closing its San Francisco office, the company’s former headquarters, in an effort to be fully decentralized.

    In late February, the company announced it was transitioning to a decentralized company, going remote first. As part of the move, it relegated its existing headquarters in San Francisco to just a regular office, going HQ-free.

    Coinbase is now taking the next step, with plans to close its San Francisco office altogether. Although it no longer serves as the company’s HQ, there was concern that its very existence would put undo emphasis on it and take away from the company’s decentralization efforts.

    While many companies have transitioned to permanent remote work, Coinbase is certainly charting a unique path with its commitment to decentralized remote work.

  • Coinbase Has Good Opening Day, Closes 31% Above Reference

    Coinbase Has Good Opening Day, Closes 31% Above Reference

    On its opening day, Coinbase soared above its initial reference price of $250 a share, hitting as high as $429.54 before settling down.

    Coinbase is one of the leading platforms for trading cryptocurrency, and its success is inextricably tied with the crypto market. It’s off to a good start however. It opened trading at $381 a share, 52% above its reference price.

    Despite soaring to 72% above reference to $429.54 during its first day, it closed at $328.28, or 14% below its opening trade.

    Jim Cramer, founder of TheStreet had high praise for Coinbase, calling it “the real deal,” saying if you’re a “big believer in cryptocurrency … you want to own Coinbase for the long haul.”

    TheStreet also quoted Wedbush analyst Dan Ives on the significance of the Coinbase IPO.

    “The Coinbase IPO is a watershed and historical event for the crypto industry and will be something the Street will be laser focused on to gauge investor appetite going forward,” Ives said.

  • Coinbase Warns of the Risk Bitcoin’s Founder Poses On Eve of IPO

    Coinbase Warns of the Risk Bitcoin’s Founder Poses On Eve of IPO

    As Coinbase prepares to go public, it is warning of the risk Bitcoin’s founder(s) pose to the cryptocurrency market in general, and Coinbase in particular.

    Coinbase has emerged as one of the most popular ways of trading cryptocurrencies. The company’s success has positioned it for a widely anticipated IPO, but the company is warning of risk factors it faces, unique to its industry, in an SEC filing.

    The majority of Coinbase’s net revenue is derived from Bitcoin and Ethereum trading. As a result, should the demand for those cryptocurrencies decline, without another rising to replace them, Coinbase would be in serious trouble.

    Another risk factor is “the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins.”

    The real identify of Bitcoin’s creator remains unknown, with “Satoshi Nakamoto” the pseudonymous name of the individual or group of individuals responsible. As Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto’s stash of bitcoins is worth an estimated $30 billion. If Nakamoto were to transfer that large a sum, roughly 5% of the 21 million total available bitcoins, it would drive the price down substantially.

    Coinbase’s listed risk factors illustrates the challenges companies face as they navigate, adapt and build a business around the emerging cryptocurrency market.