If you think about it from a crypto economics perspective, what happened to Bitcoin this week with the inclusion of Ethereum on Coinbase is frankly devastating to Bitcoin’s brand image – and utility.
Coinbase, founded in 2012, sitting on a fat 4.1 million customer userbase, and backed by some of the deepest pockets in Silicon Valley… the crypto services giant had always been staunchly a believer in Bitcoin exclusivity until this week’s rollout.
As wildly exciting as the Ethereum community and ecosystem are becoming, in the back of one’s mind was the realization that it is still not in the same league as Bitcoin – can’t move it onto Coinbase and have it in my bank account as fiat currency the next day. Can’t buy it on Coinbase with a MasterCard instant buy.
Like every “alt” crypto project before it, Ethereum was relegated to a bizarre secondary realm which typically involved trading bitcoins for Ether on a third party exchange web site – or using an institutional level crypto trading platform, with the minimums and exhausting user identity processes that institutional level account openings can come with.
Now that’s all different. Coinbase has Ether on an equal footing with Bitcoin on the company’s Trade page, as shown in the screenshot below.
With the Ether name and blockchain now opened up to millions of new households, and with millions of Coinbase users able to convert Bitcoin into Ether with ease and security… it will be interesting to see if the recent ETH/BTC trading ratios are maintained, given the massive increase in freedom that’s been granted to their userbase by adding a second currency.
Maybe Bitcoin users are all absolute loyalists as the louder thought leaders of the community sometimes portray themselves.
But maybe they aren’t. Maybe they are just interested in cryptocurrency , and if they see […]
