Coinbase is an American company dedicated to exchanging cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and  Shiba Inu, functioning as an exchange. Like a growing number of services, this company operates exclusively online; its services are offered entirely through the web, and there are no physical Coinbase branches where you can trade or access its services. In fact, the company itself has no physical headquarters and operates completely online.

Coinbase was founded in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong, an Airbnb engineer, who secured several rounds of funding through startup grant programs. He was later joined by other team members to develop the company. The project’s name refers to the process in cryptocurrencies where a new amount of currency is added to circulation in proof-of-work systems.

In October of that year, they began operating by offering the service of buying Bitcoins through bank transfers and since then they have been expanding their services in part thanks to substantial external investments until in 2014 they reached the mark of one million users on the platform, the same year in which they acquired several companies in the sector and launched a new service focused on the storage of bitcoins.

The following year, they began to partner with large companies such as Dell and Expedia, enabling them to accept bitcoins as a form of payment,nt and launched their own professional Bitcoin exchange, which would later become the current Coinbase exchange in 2016 to accommodate more cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Dogecoin.

From that moment on, the company began to grow rapidly as interest in these virtual currencies increased, adding more and more services and cryptocurrencies to operate with until it became so relevant that it advertised at major events like the Super Bowl and had billions of users around the world, although recently, after the cryptocurrency boom, things are starting to go wrong for the company.

What is Coinbase used for?

Like any other exchange, Coinbase is a platform for currency exchange. However, unlike traditional exchanges, Coinbase also allows you to exchange between different cryptocurrencies, between different official currencies like the euro or the dollar, and between traditional currencies and virtual currencies such as cryptocurrencies or tokens. This last function is the most frequently used on these platforms, as most users see them as an entry point into the world of cryptocurrencies.

The company offers various services centered around currency exchange  and especially cryptocurrency trading, all focused on making the trading process simpler and faster for its clients:

-An application for carrying out operations and serving as a cryptocurrency exchange, called Coinbase, with a web version and another professional version focused on the exchange of more virtual values ​​known as Coinbase Pro.

-A virtual wallet in the form of an application so that its users could access decentralized applications based on cryptocurrencies.

-An application called Coinbase NFT for the buying and selling of NFTs, such as those for video games, between different users.

-A proprietary cryptocurrency known as UCoin, which was part of the stablecoin group, or in other words, whose value was linked to that of an official currency, in this case the value of the US dollar, thus making transactions within its platform much easier and above all faster.

-A Visa debit card so that its users could use it like a normal bank card but to pay with cryptocurrencies.

-Coinbase Commerce, a cryptocurrency-based payment system that allowed businesses to accept cryptocurrency payments.