Coinbase Still Signing Up 50,000 Users a Day

Coinbase is signing up 50,000 new customers a day even amid a virtual-coin price slump, CEO Brian Armstrong said, according to Bloomberg.

While plenty of speculators have been attracted to cryptocurrencies, particularly during the price run-up last year, many haven’t made money. Bitcoin’s price of about $6,120 price is now almost 70 percent off its December high, and most other coins are in steep decline as well.

“This technology is going through a series of bubbles and corrections, and each time it does that, it’s at a new plateau,“ Armstrong said. “People’s expectations are all over the map, but real-world adoption has been going up.“

Coinbase helped customers trade $150 billion worth of cryptocurrency over the past year, he said. Armstrong didn’t say how the company’s current rate of new customers compared with a year ago. He estimated that about 10 percent of digital coins are used in real life, in games and other purchases online.

“I think it will be quite some time before you cross the street to Starbucks in the U.S. and pay with crypto,“ he said. Still, Coinbase continues to grow. The company has about 1,000 employees, and one-third of them, and a third of the company’s leadership team, are women, he said.