*By Tanaya Macheel and Jacqueline Corba*
Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange and the first crypto start-up to earn a billion-dollar valuation, is taking advantage of the crypto slump to prime even more growth.
Just don't call it "Too Big To Fail."
"I think this is actually the time that Coinbase loves, because we are laying the foundation for something much bigger," Emilie Choi, the company's vice president of corporate and business development, told Cheddar at the company's headquarters in San Francisco. "We are seeing all these really great promising indicators towards what we believe is the next frontier of technology."
In the last year, Coinbase's homebase in San Fran has grown from a single floor to three, and it's opened a New York office to handle the additional business from institutional investors. It currently boasts about 500 employees globally and plans to ultimately continue its international expansion ー cryptocurrencies are borderless, in essence.
The company first cracked the billion dollar valuation last year, when Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were at all-time highs. But it could soon be valued at much more ー some $8 billion, according to a recent [Recode](https://www.recode.net/2018/10/2/17928274/coinbase-tiger-global-8-billion-funding-deal) report.
Choi, skirting the subject of the rumor, said Coinbase is profitable and doesn't necessarily need to keep raising money. But she acknowledged what new funding would mean for the company at this stage in its development.
"What we often think about is when there is opportunity for market. For example, if we continue to experience a crypto slump, and there’s more of a consolidation of crypto companies, do we want to have more firepower on hand to acquire more companies?" she asked.
With each passing day, Coinbase looks more and more like a banking institution, offering a range of consumer-focused and consumer-friendly products. It also increasingly provides more sophisticated tools to accredited investors and major institutions.
"The mission of Coinbase is to build an open financial system for the world and our consumer product. We're focused on access, ownership, and use," Dan Romero, general manager of Coinbase Consumer told Cheddar.
The company has more than 20 million user accounts, putting it just behind Bank of America's 25 million mobile users, and far ahead of Citi's 10 million. Even millennial-focused Robinhood, which launched in 2013, a year after Coinbase, and introduced crypto trading without fees at the beginning of this year, has 5 million customers across its services.
But unlike the leaders of the old guard of finance, crypto's roots in decentralization will protect companies against moral hazard and help them avoid mistakes of the past, Romero said. That is, if leaders like Coinbase do their jobs right.
"No one controls Bitcoin, no one controls Ethereum," Romero said. "That's the difference between, kind of, the original finance system and the open financial system."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
