The big news in crypto isn’t a $400 million loss (yawn), but the hotting battle between exchanges for the biggest slice of the consumer pie.
Coinbase’s meteoric 2017 brought with it a host of eye-popping numbers, including 13.3 million accounts by November and, according to Recode, revenue that “crossed $1 billion” during the year.
In short, at least one company is extracting material normal (top line) income from the bitcoin boom. However, not all things are clear on the horizon for Coinbase. Its success, including rising to the top of mobile app stores last year as the price of many tokens shot north, is attracting increased competition.
Robinhood, famous for bringing commission-free trading to equities, is moving into the crypto space in Q1. Here’s TechCrunch:
No-commission stock trading app Robinhood will let you buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum without any added transaction fees starting in February, compared to Coinbase’s 1.5 to 4 percent fees in the US. And as of today Robinhood will let all users track the price, news, and set up alerts on those and 14 other top crypto coins, including Litecoin and Ripple.
TechCrunch goes on to quote a Robinhood executive saying that it intends to run its crypto business as a “break-even” affair. Call it the Amazon approach the trading: your margin is their opportunity.
So, domestically, Coinbase is going to have fresh competition in 2018. And it doesn’t stop there, really.
Also out this week is Coinsquare, a Canadian shop that, according to Strategic Coin, “has announced that it plans to raise $150 million CAD ($120 million) through an initial public offering (IPO) in a bid to expand into larger markets and challenge industry heavyweights like Coinbase.”
In crypto, it seems likely that the only thing coming is more competition.