Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has acquired Earn.com, a blockchain-based social network portal, in a deal reportedly worth $120 million. To date, this is Coinbase’s fifth acquisition and its biggest.
Financial details were not disclosed, but valued the acquisition at about $120 million. As part of the deal, Coinbase hired Earn.com CEO Balaji Srinivasan as its chief technology officer (CTO).
Earn.com, which was initially called 21.co, launched in 2013 as a maker of bitcoin mining hardware. It pivoted in 2017 by rebranding itself as a social network where people can earn money by answering questions or completing a task.
New Coinbase CTO: Blockchain Is The Future
Balaji Srinivasan is an early adopter of cryptocurrencies and a longtime bitcoin evangelist. He is a former partner at American venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Srinivasan said he was thrilled to join Coinbase because it’s a leader in the blockchain space. “Everyone is aligning behind Coinbase as the winner of blockchain in the U.S.,” Srinivasan told .
Coinbase hired longtime bitcoin evangelist Balaji Srinivasan (right) as CTO. (Image: screenshot)
Despite the recent erratic price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies, Srinivasan has undiluted confidence in the future of bitcoin and blockchain, the technology underpinning virtual currencies. After all, we have been here before, he noted:
“Facebook for almost ten years was called a fad and a bubble,” Srinivasan said. “Then it became this gigantic thing. Blockchain is like that.”
There’s a growing corporate movement embracing blockchain as experts predict the disruptive technology will transform finance, supply-chain management, healthcare, and even the music business.
Samsung and Rockefellers Back Crypto
On April 16, Samsung Electronics revealed it might soon adopt a blockchain ledger system to track its global shipments. The move could slash its shipping costs by a stunning 20 percent.
“It will have an enormous impact on the supply chains of manufacturing industries,” Song Kwang-woo, the blockchain chief at Samsung SDS, told . “Blockchain is a core platform to fuel our digital transformation.”
Last week, Ripple, the blockchain-based payment network, of its XRP cryptocurrency into Blockchain Capital Parallel IV, a fund that will invest in blockchain ventures.
“There are entire verticals — such as healthcare or identity management — that could benefit from blockchain or distributed ledger technology,” said Bart Stephens, co-founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital.
Similarly, the Rockefeller family also announced plans to make in blockchain startups through its venture-capital arm, Venrock, as BTCManager has reported.
Ditching Wall Street For Blockchain
Another striking trend — this one bubbling up from academia — is the growing number of MBA students who are ditching traditional finance jobs on Wall Street to join blockchain startups.
“We’ve got a lot of people who came from traditional finance backgrounds that are forgoing the chance to go back into that world to get involved in blockchain,” Robbie Mitchnick, an MBA candidate at Stanford Business School, told .
Harvard Business School is offering more classes in bitcoin and blockchain. (Image: Pixabay)
Business students at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have demanded more course offerings on blockchain and bitcoin, and the by bolstering such classes, as BTCManager previously reported.
Mitch Weiss, a professor at Harvard Business School, has integrated blockchain into his classes. He said :
“We take our task to educate leaders who will make a difference in the world, and I think it’s safe to say that blockchain leadership is going to be a big part of that.”
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Mayor-president of Louisiana city, Joel Robideaux has urged the local residents of the city to launch their own (ICO) in an April 12 speech.
Mayor Expresses Faith In ICOs
This virtual currency proposal was by far the biggest reveal in Robideaux’s annual address at the Heymann Center. He painted Lafayette parish as a technological hub, which needs to use this advantage to decentralize the local economy and better the government services.
The entire Lafayette parish is under huge financial stress. In a presentation given by the town in March, it was observed that property tax revenues are not sufficient enough and that the city fund to run finance operations is going bankrupt. Some of the coping mechanisms to battle this ill situation include an increase in tax, removing the parks department and unsolicited annexation of unincorporated land.
However, according to local sources, Robideaux is high on a rather unconventional solution, i.e., create your own cryptocurrency and sell it.
As by The Acadiana Advocate, Robideaux said that the parish must launch its own cryptocurrency, allocate it via an ICO, and use the incoming proceeds to “build a living lab of blockchain researchers and developers.”
Cryptocurrencies Not A Tool For The Corrupt
Speaking about the ’s rapid developments in the corporate world, Robideaux added:
“It’s the recognition of global stakeholders that the world of banking, finance and payment systems is forever changed, that the world of healthcare, government and possibly every other industry is about to be disrupted.”
With regard to concerns that could be used for money laundering or other deceitful purposes, the Mayor believes that secure digital currency transactions – that are untraceable and unregulated – are not used by “global libertarians.”
The mayor did not shed much light on the question that what function this cryptocurrency would serve other than raising funds. He sees cryptocurrency as a tool to finance public works and allow citizens to participate in the financing, adding that the digital tokens are “an alternative for financing public infrastructure.”
Earlier, U.S. City of Berkeley Joined List Of Blockchain Adopters
In fact, this is not the first time that a municipality has proposed such an idea. The city of , California had earlier proposed to create a local cryptocurrency, describing the tokens as “crypto-enabled microbonds.”
The proposal was made in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s bill that proposed blocking development funds to “sanctuary cities” – a list that includes Berkeley.
Officials of Berkeley up with UC Berkeley’s and blockchain startup to create an ICO plan, with hopes that the raised funds allow for building affordable homes meant for low-to-middle income groups.
The token would be backed by official government bonds – classifying it as a utility token – thus creating a digitized platform which efficiently raises funds from multiple stakeholders.
By using a public blockchain, the city’s administration cuts out intermediaries and allows for a transparent platform through which all citizens to view bond issuances.
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