Coinbase, a leading Bitcoin wallet & services firm with more than 4.1 million customers in 32 countries, had recently added Ethereum's currency, Ether, to the company's online exchange product, GDAX.
Today's announcement and addition, however, make Ether accessible by default to their millions of Coinbase.com customers with a "ETH Wallet" listed on the left hand side, directly below a user's existing BTC wallet balance on the Coinbase platform.
A blog post from Coinbase briefly explained the decision:
"We are pleased to announce that Coinbase is adding support for Ethereum. Consumers can now easily buy, sell, send, and store Ether in their Coinbase account. To get started, visit the "Trade" page on Coinbase.com or tap on "Buy" or "Sell" options in our iOS or Android apps."
Additionally, the company put up a general public friendly explanation of Ethereum at https://www.coinbase.com/what-is-ether.
Not to tip my own hat here, but last year when Ether was trading for less than a dollar (one Ether is now about US $12.29), I featured it in my newsletter - many people disagreed with me that it was a potential competitor to Bitcoin. They didn't get it. But now, after the Coinbase addition and a number of other recent breakthroughs including yesterday's successful fork, more are warming to the idea of Ether. For one thing, its transactions confirm or settle in about 15 seconds on average, as opposed to Bitcoin's 10 minute average block time. I'm not upset, though; subscriptions to the newsletter and downloads of my new Bitcoin & Ethereum e-booklet have skyrocketed over the past several weeks.
It's impossible to say what the future holds for either technology, but people are definitely starting to take these technologies more seriously. Debate has ended and the ambitious crypto construction projects have begun.
Trying to decide if buying Bitcoin or Ether is easy enough? Watch our walkthrough below:
Full disclosure: Not financial advice, provided for educational purposes only. Not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any cryptocurrency or asset. At time of publication, I do hold some bitcoins and ethers in my long term portfolio.