Crypto Exchange Coinbase Goes Into Overdrive: Leads US Bitcoin Industry With New Hires, Key Acquisitions

Coinbase published a string of achievements in the second quarter of 2018. The San Francisco-based exchange has tackled five key areas of growth that are expanding the cryptocurrency sector at large and shoring up integration with traditional investors.

The company expanded its staff with 64 key players.

Key Hires

• VP of Financial Planning & Analysis
• Head of Data Engineering
• Head of Business Development
• Head of Business Operations
• Head of Business Analytics
• 59 Product and Engineering team members

The company made 12 strategic investments in blockchain-based companies.

Coinbase Ventures 

• OpenSea – a peer-to-peer marketplace for rare digital items and crypto collectibles
• Celo – a blockchain-based platform that makes sending payments worldwide as easy as sending a text
• Compound – an open-source protocol for algorithmic, efficient money markets on the Ethereum blockchain
• TruStory – a platform for users to discover and validate claims people make online
• Elph – a portal for decentralized apps
• Reserve – a full-stack, open-source, decentralized stablecoin that is censorship resistant
• Rarebits – a marketplace where users can buy, sell and discover crypto assets
• Relevant – a protocol designed to curate content on the internet
• Spacemesh – a fair blockmesh operating system to run general-purpose smart contracts at web-scale
• Etherscan – Ethereum blockchain explorer
• Fuel Games – scalable blockchain infrastructure for video games
• Unlock Protocol – access control protocol to help creators monetize content without a middleman

Coinbase bought four companies.

Acquisitions

Earn.com

Cipher Browser

Paradex

Keystone Capital

The company launched three new offerings for institutional traders and wealthy customers.

Institutional Reach

Coinbase Index Fund

Coinbase Custody

Coinbase Prime

New Offices

Coinbase opened new offices in Chicago and Portland.

Growth

By the end of 2017 Coinbase had 4.3 million users. It now has over 20 million customer accounts, rivaling Fidelity Investments and exceeding Charles Schwab.

Customer Support Issues

The Coinbase quarterly retrospective details efforts to improve customer service amid revelations earlier this year that Coinbase customers filed 115 allegations of fraud against the popular exchange, according to SEC documents.

In another example of its customer service woes, ABC 7 News in San Francisco reports that its consumer help line recently intervened on behalf of a Coinbase customer who was unable to access her account. According to ABC 7, when the customer changed jobs, she lost access to the email address associated with her Coinbase account. She then contacted Coinbase, which responded that they would handle the issue. Four months later, after no resolution and no account access, the customer reached out to 7 on Your Side.

Once the help line contacted Coinbase, it resolved the customer’s case within two days.

CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledges a backlog of support tickets and promises significant improvements.

“We worked incredibly hard this quarter to address the backlog of support tickets, to shore up our support team for the busiest times and increase our responsiveness. In Q2, we increased our support team by over 150%, decreased our average time to first response to <10 hours for 95% of incoming volume today, and because of these moves, we are able to resolve issues faster and decreased the backlog by 95%.”