No, it's not a joke and yes, this is a good thing. Coinbase announced today they are adding support for Bitcoin to their Coinbase Wallet app, a place where you could previously store only Ethereum and Ethereum-based tokens.
Why is this important? And, more importantly, why is this a good thing?
Coinbase Wallet is different from Coinbase.com. To quote the very blog I linked above:
With Coinbase.com, you can buy crypto and Coinbase stores it (along with your private keys) for you; with Coinbase Wallet, you store your own crypto (safeguarded by a private key that only you know).
This is a very bold step forward, in which Coinbase gives away control of the tokens you trade with them. If I would dare to formulate a reason for this move, I would say Coinbase wants to increase volatility, by letting user trade crypto from more than one place. Also, giving away control may portray Coinbase as a more flexible crypto company. But I won't dare to formulate a reason for this move, so feel free to imagine whatever you want.
The bear market has all kinds of unexpected benefits. Not only the price is getting lower and lower, but crypto companies are finally having a client-oriented attitude (as opposed to a profit-oriented attitude, greatly ignoring the client needs).
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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I think they're starting to feel the squeeze from Binance and all the improvements they've been making the past couple of months adding Euro trading and credit card purchases.
Either this is a huge mistake from coinbase or they're realizing that allowing users to hold their own coins is more important than claiming free crypto they're getting from forks when they're not "supporting" said fork.
Maybe, they just decided it's not worth the bad press when they don't support it and transfer the funds to the users or when they have to deal with all the headaches by supporting it.
I think this is just a move in anticipation of where the crypto market is heading anyway especially with Binance working on a DEX.
I would lean towards that.
Not being a crypto trader, I'm still amazed that Coinbase only now is including BTC on it's wallet.
About time, clearly.
Thanks!
Basically Coinbase Wallet was just them rebranding the Toshi Ether Wallet app they bought in August 2018, since that was an ether only app they had to build in BTC support.
You will know crytpo is here when companies start really driving down fees and hassle. Like look at the journey from the first "discount" brokers in the 70's to the brokers today.
Wow this is a great step for freelancers and bloggers specially :D
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To be fair
(if you want to think negative of them)
By moving people to use their wallet they can sell the user data and give more control to government.
Another reason is to gain more leverage more a network.
If more people use their noncustodial wallet, Coinbase gains more say of the likewise network.
Interesting, I didn’t know Coinbase had a wallet service where you hold the private key (sorta like Blockchain.info)
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Back in August 2018, they bought a popular Ether only wallet called Toshi and instantly rebranded it to Coinbase Wallet.
The bear market is really humbling them. Hehehehe!!!