Meet The 12 Days Of Coinbase
As reported by Ethereum World News previously, a few weeks back, Coinbase launched a holiday-induced program dubbed the “12 Days of [Crypto],” an evident nod to the age-old Christmas carol, “The 12 Days Of Christmas.”
As revealed on a section of Coinbase’s webpage, the startup told users to check back “each day at noon PST” from December 10th to the 21st, as the San Francisco-headquartered firm was aiming to announce “new features, support for new cryptocurrencies, and more.” In a blog post posted by Verity Coltman, part of the company’s business development team, it was explained that this multi-day event was the culmination of Coinbase’s development efforts in 2018.
The Crypto Good
- Day One — a partnership with WeGift: The first day started with a bang, with the startup announcing a partnership with digital gift card provider WeGift, which allowed customers in the US, UK, and EU to cash out their Coinbase balances through gift cards (Adidas, Uber, Nike, etc.)
- Day Two, Six, Twelve — Crypto Donations: Multiple days throughout this initiative saw the startup announce that it would be donating cryptocurrencies to those in need. This is not only a net benefit for the impoverished, but also for crypto adoption as a whole.
- Day Five — Paypal Withdrawals: This day saw Coinbase announce that it would allow its US customers to withdraw their balances via Paypal for free.
- Day Seven — USDC: Coinbase offered a primer on USD Coin (USDC) starting on Day Seven, providing consumers with pieces of information about the key stablecoin.
- Day Eight — Crypto-To-Crypto: On this day, after much deliberation, the startup finally revealed that it had added for native crypto-to-crypto support on its consumer-centric platform. Starting earlier this week, a majority of users across the globe will be able to instantly transact one cryptocurrency to another for a 1% spread.
- Day Nine — DAI, Maker (MKR), Golem (GNT), Zilliqa (ZIL) Support: This day was arguably the most exciting out of the bunch. On Tuesday, amid a flurried market rally, Coinbase Pro suddenly revealed that it would be listing DAI and Maker (MKR), the two assets of the Andreessen Horowitz-backed MakerDao project, Golem (GNT), and Zilliqa (ZIL). All the aforementioned assets are situated on the Ethereum Network, with Coinbase’s decision to list these crypto assets likely stemming from the technical ease of implementation. The company has yet to add the aforementioned four tokens to its consumer-centric platform.
The Bad
- Day Three — A video???: Although the video, which highlighted crypto’s current and future potential, was well-produced, it didn’t provide much of a value proposition for consumers.
- Day Four — Watchlist: I’m actually surprised that Coinbase didn’t announce this feature earlier. On Day Four, the firm revealed that it would allow users to “watch” cryptocurrencies and track their performance… boring!
- Day Nine — Earn: The premise of this announcement was good — Coinbase wanted to allow consumers to learn more about cryptocurrencies. Yet, many would argue that this idea was executed poorly and in bad taste.
Some have argued that Coinbase, an $8 billion startup, should have forked out much more through charity. Regardless, the collective ~$25,000 that the firm forked out will have a meaningful impact on the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, so such a move shouldn’t be fully discounted.
The Ugly
To be frank, Coinbase’s holiday initiative wasn’t ugly… In fact, if you discount the fact that the startup didn’t conform to requests from the public (addition of support for *insert community favorite crypto here*, cheaper fees, etc.), 12 Days was likely the most successful holiday-themed sequence of events that has ever blessed the cryptosphere.
This is, of course, due to the fact that 12 Days was the first program of its kind. So for now, I guess we will have to wait until next year to see if Coinbase, or one of its competitors, can top the crypto fun of 2018’s holiday season.
Coinbase Website Title Image Courtesy of Marco Verch Via Flickr