Coinbase Supports Ethereum

Coinbase, long a bitcoin-only supporter, is finally adding support for another currency, announcing yesterday (July 21) sitewide support for Ethereum, the digital currency that allows peer-to-peer contracts.

The fact that Coinbase is providing systemwide support for Ethereum is good news for the up-and-coming digital currency. Coinbase caters to both professional exchange traders as well as consumers, and supporting the currency systemwide means lots of action for Ethereum. Coinbase is credited with making bitcoin trading easy, providing users with a simple interface to transact bitcoins, opening it up to the average person and not only the tech-savvy. That is now happening again with Ethereum, which will function in the same ways as bitcoin. “Ethereum will be a first-class citizen on Coinbase,” Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam said in a report.

Coinbase’s support for Ethereum has been growing since this spring when Ehrsam penned a blog in which he argued Ethereum is at the forefront of digital currency. Around the time of the favorable blog post, Coinbase added support for Ethereum trading to GDAX, the cryptocurrency exchange for traders. And now it’s adding it to the consumer side as well.

Coinbase is excited about Ethereum because the company says it’s unique in that it improves upon bitcoin rather than make minor tweaks like other alternative digital currency. That’s made possible by Ethereum’s ability for applications to be built on top of the currency. By adding it systemwide, Coinbase is signaling that it believes the digital currency is here to stay. What’s more, the CEO of Coinbase said Ethereum may not be the end of the digital currencies the company supports. Down the road the company wants to provide support for a whole host of digital assets.

YoCoin is another new alternative digital currency that is coming on the scene. YoCoin is being marketed specifically to millennials since the company believes they are more likely to embrace this type of currency.