The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

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Coinbase disrupting traditional banking...11M customers adding 1M/mo.

Will Coinbase Be the Biggest Bank In The World?
https://hackernoon.com/will-coinbase-be-the-biggest-bank-in-the-world-5d147c9e6caa

San Francisco based Coinbase are the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. They have 11 million users and 200 staff. Lloyds bank have 30 million users and 75k staff. Wells Fargo have 70 million users and 270k staff.

Last year Coinbase made their mission statement public. Here’s the headlines since it’s lengthy…

“Many good ideas never happen due to the high friction of payments. It is a major hurdle in launching a business. In the future, it shouldn’t matter if you’re a hot Silicon Valley startup, or a 16-year-old in Mumbai with a new idea. If you build something people want, it should be available to everyone on day one.

If the world’s payments ran on an open protocol (that no one company or country controlled) we’d see a huge efficiency improvement, in the same way that email or SMS spread around the world as an open standard.

About 1/3 of the world lives on less than $2 per day, but 90% of them don’t have access to a bank account. The traditional banking business model (earning interest on deposits) doesn’t work for people with very little money. Our belief is that digital currency on smartphones will bring financial services to many people in the developing world, and this will help level the playing field.”