Both Binance and Coinbase suffered technological issues on Wednesday — the same day Bitcoin (BTC) crossed the $20,000 price threshold for the first time. Binance related its issues to the number of people surfing the exchange. Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, Binance’s CEO, tweeted on Wednesday at 2:13 pm UTC: “#Bitcoin just popped. Experienced some scaling issues. Should be fixed for now. Underestimated demand. Adding A LOT more ‘servers’ still.” An update from CZ came about half an hour later, revealing improvements, as well as a dramatic surge in users on the platform. “Still some latency issues here and there. Working …

Digital currency exchange Coinbase welcomed a new member to its Board of Directors on Wednesday, as it continues to draw on expertise from outside the cryptocurrency sector. Kelly Kramer, former CFO at Cisco, will serve as Chair of Coinbase’s Audit and Compliance Committee, CEO Brian Armstrong revealed Wednesday. She replaces former Charles Schwab board member Chris Dodds, who served on Coinbase’s board for over two years. Kramer joins Coinbase following a nine-year stint at Cisco, one of the world’s largest IT conglomerates, where she held various senior roles, including executive vice president and chief financial officer. Kramer was “responsible for …

Less than a month after Brian Armstrong declared Coinbase should “be laser focused on achieving its mission,” he seemingly violated his own policy by tweeting a political post riddled with falsehoods... during business hours. In an Oct. 23 tweet from Armstrong’s personal account, the Coinbase CEO posted a link to a blog written by Rob Rhinehart on Kanye West’s presidential run with the tagline “epic post.” Rhinehart’s Twitter account is no longer available for unknown reasons, although its absence may be related to the inaccuracies and outright falsehoods contained in the post — even if it were written as satire, …

America’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, , made headlines over the past few weeks for an internal culture change that effectively told employees that within its walls. Furthermore, a recently leaked audio apparently reveals that most employees approve of the new direction. The “apolitical” stance that is being adopted by the company was announced by CEO Brian Armstrong in a published post on the exchange’s Medium platform on Sept. 27. Armstrong’s message cited the incredibly difficult year that has hamstrung many economies, companies and individuals around the world, which has also led to a spring of various societal issues. In an American …

Coinbase leadership recently moved to curb sociopolitical discourse within their company, mandating that the team should focus on the company's mission rather than politics. Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong later held an all-hands meeting, billed as an "ask me anything" session, to discuss changes in company culture with his employees. Audio of this staff-wide meeting from Oct. 1 was subsequently to media outlet Motherboard; the technology wing of Vice media. "An internal all-hands meeting obtained by Motherboard shows Coinbase management was accused of 'stunting internal discussion' and that it forced employees to delete political Slack messages," Motherboard wrote. Motherboard …

After adjustments to company policies, popular U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase has seen backlash from employees who disagreed with the changes. Coinbase received national attention for a recent change to its policies, which required employees to avoid political and social distractions, and instead focus on its core mission of building "an open financial system for the world". Multiple commentators, including Jack Dorsey of Twitter, found the new direction to be at odds with the cryptocurrency industry's values. "We subsequently decided to make a generous exit package available to any employee who didn’t feel they could be on board with this direction," …

You can tell from Brian Armstrong’s opening words that he’s a numbers guy. “There have been a lot of difficult events in the world this year,” understated the Coinbase CEO in announcing that forthwith, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States would do a better job of ignoring them. According to Armstrong’s recent blog post, Coinbase’s mission is to “create an open financial system for the world.” He left out the second half of the company’s mission statement, the part about being “the leading global brand for helping people convert digital currency into and out of their local currency,” …

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has taken major U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase to task over its open letter to employees published on Sept. 28. The letter, written by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, explained why the firm intends to avoid political and social distractions, and instead focus on its core mission of building an open financial system for the world. The new direction has met with strong support in some quarters and pushback from others. In a Twitter post to his 4.7 million followers, Dorsey argues that “Bitcoin (aka crypto) is direct activism against an unverifiable and exclusionary financial system.” He goes …

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of United States cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, alleges that Apple is stifling innovation in crypto and sidelining DeFi to protect itself from competition. In a Twitter thread published on Sept. 11, Armstrong doubled down on his earlier claims that Apple continues to block some functionalities for cryptocurrency developers. The CEO alleged that other cryptocurrency firms are “reluctant to speak out on these topics for fear of retaliation,” but that he feels the need to speak out as Coinbase has exhausted regular channels for dialog with Apple and has reached a “dead end.” According to Armstrong, Apple has …

Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong says that company leaders are increasingly opting to avoid mainstream journalists by speaking directly to audiences on unmediated social media platforms. “Our customers are on YouTube/podcasts/social media — not reading mainstream media,” asserted Armstrong in a May 22 Twitter thread, adding that companies are now “able to control their own distribution channels” in the current media landscape. Publishing to our own blog/twitter/YouTube lets us say what is on our mind and talk to our customers — not get one quote in an otherwise balanced (or sometimes outright mean/snarky) article. Crypto exchange CEO avoids traditional media …

U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has announced it will transition to a “remote-first” workplace after the pandemic lockdown is over in an effort to guard against location-centric risks and to improve decentralization. In an open letter to all employees, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: “After the restrictions of quarantine are over, Coinbase will embrace being ‘remote-first’, meaning we will offer the option to work in an office or remotely for the vast majority of roles.” An estimated 20% to 60% of all Coinbase employees will continue to work remotely once all COVID-19 restrictions are removed. Also, it’s probably cheaper The mindset …

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, explained what developments he believes will drive the growth of cryptocurrency’s’ user base. In a series of tweets on March 4, Armstrong illustrated how the developments that resulted in the mass adoption of the internet are similar to the work that is currently being done on cryptocurrencies. While he admitted that it is not clear which blockchain “will help get crypto from ~50M users to 5B,” he predicted: “The chain that manages to ship some of these scalability, privacy, decentralized identity, and developer tool solutions will have a big leg up.” …