Coinbase is Eating the (Bitcoin) World
Over three years ago, internet pioneer and investor Marc Andreessen famously declared: “software is eating the world.” The phrase has since become so popular that his firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), adopted the phrase as its tag line. Today, I think it’s fair to say that one of Andreessen’s portfolio companies, Coinbase, is eating the Bitcoin world — with no signs of slowing down.
It started out simply enough. You had Mt. Gox as the industry’s leading exchange, Blockchain.info as its leading wallet provider, and BitPay as its leading merchant services business. Then Coinbase said, “let’s do all three” in 2013, and so they did. Pretty well, in fact. Coinbase’s trading volumes are most certainly higher than Gox’s these days, its wallet growth is only slightly below that of Blockchain’s, and it has onboarded several billion dollar merchants so far this year.
Then it became apparent (if it wasn’t already obvious) that the company would face real competition from specialized ventures that planned to focus on chipping away at the company’s early dominance in at least one of its core services area. Circle came out with a competitive fully-insured wallet; Xapo and BitGo launched with an emphasis on enterprise-grade security and cold storage, Chain and Gem raised money to bring more comprehensive developer tools to market, and Bitnet joined BitPay as another credible merchant services competitor.
But Coinbase didn’t flinch or miss a beat. They defended their turf and continued to roll out new products.
Xapo, nice vault. We can do that, too. Chain, nice work on that open source node and developer library, how do you like Toshi? BitGo, thanks for paving the way in multi-sig, we think some of our users will use that too! ChangeTip, we like your micro-payments focus…mind if we join you? BitReserve, you’re right; volatility sucks, so we decided to roll out dollar-pegged bitcoin wallets as well.
Beyond that, Coinbase is the only bitcoin company that allows users to make instant “rebuys”. They are one of few with a fully functioning iOS app (as I wrote back in June, they never really lost control of it), introduced some sexy (albeit basic) bitcoin charts, invested some resources in creating their own “app store”, gave away bitcoin to a ton of college kids, and continue to grow the team, user ranks and merchant base. All things you would expect from the industry’s largest and most valuable company.
It’s never really fun or insightful to pick the 800 pound gorilla as the company with the year’s best performance, but Coinbase has to get the nod this year, anyway. We can argue about the relative strengths of their products versus myriad competitors, but 2014 has been a year in which the Coinbase team tackled a ton of different initiatives without dropping the ball on any of them. So even if you think they are only operating at an A-/B+ level in some areas, the body of work and execution across the board has been impressive.
Even as heavy favorites, they covered the spread.
In 2014 at least, Coinbase has been eating the Bitcoin world. They’re the Idiot company of the year.
(Congrats?)
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
BitGo, Palo Alto (VC-backed)
-The leading Bitcoin multi-sig security company
-Open positions: Back-end / Front-End / iOS / Security Engineers, UX Designer
-Check out BitGo (www.bitgoinc.com/jobs) and email jobs@bitgo.com
Bolt, San Francisco (VC-backed)
-Stealth startup focused on consumer applications of Bitcoin.
-Open positions: Security Engineer, Ruby Engineer, UI/UX Designer, Executive Assistant.
-Check out Bolt (bolt.com) and email jobs@bolt.com.
Elliptic, London (VC-backed)
-Vault and enterprise digital currency services.
-Open positions: Software engineers and business development gurus.
-Learn more and apply at elliptic.workable.com
Today’s Tid Bits
Two for one special tomorrow.
AT is out sick today. ChangeTip him some soup or beer at @AndrewT307, or send me some bitcoin through the CT link above or Coinbase link below, and I’ll get it to him.
Have a tip or feedback? Email me! (2bitidiot@gmail.com)
