The Ethereum community on Reddit struck a joyful tone on news Coinbase will be further working with secondplace cryptocurrency Ether, beyond the integration of Ether on Coinbase’s exchange, which has already launched.
As Forbes reported:
White notes that Ethereum launched only a year ago and more experimentation was needed: “We’d be remiss if we said, this is absolutely going to be here to stay.” Even so, Coinbase has already added ether to GDAX and will be making it available on its retail site Coinbase.com this month.
On the whole, the Ethereum user community seems to like the timing of the cryptocurrency’s addition. Reddit user darawk posted, “This is extremely well timed. Easy access to ether for new consumers will coincide with the positive press regarding the (hopeful) success of the hard fork.”
Additionally, according to publicly viewable network statistics, Ethereum transaction volume has been increasing rapidly in recent months, even as much of the media coverage remains focused on firstplace cryptocurrency Bitcoin, valued at $10.4 billion collectively. (Ethereum is worth about $918 million.)
Coinbase, headquartered in San Francisco, has more than 4.1 million customers in 32 supported countries. The company says more than $4 billion worth of Bitcoin has been exchanged on their platform so far. Coinbase was founded in 2012 by former Airbnb software engineer Brian Armstrong and Goldman Sachs alum Fred Ehrsam.
Watch my recent thought piece on YouTube below - which might dominate the marketplace one day, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or another crypto technology altogether?
Full disclosure: At time of publication, I do hold some bitcoins and ethers in my long term portfolio. I’m a long term user and researcher of these currencies, and also hold some gold and US Dollars.