Coinbase Review, Usage Tips and Referral Benefits

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Company

Founded in June 2012, Coinbase is the largest crypto-currency exchange in North America. It was publicly listed on NASDAQ on 14 Apr 2021.

The launch of the USDC stablecoin was powered by a collaboration between Coinbase and Circle through the co-founding of the CENTRE Consortium.

Coinbase’s “Mission, Vision & Strategy”:

Investors

• GIC was among investors who raised $300 million for Coinbase in 2018
  • GIC is a sovereign wealth fund established in 1981 to manage Singapore’s foreign reserves

Key metrics

• 108+ million customers [Nov 2022]
  • 43+ million verified customers (reported for filing for NASDAQ listing)
• held $256 billion in fiat currencies and virtual coins. [May 2022]

Notable developments

• Sued by US SEC [6 Jun 2023]
  • sued for operating illegally without having first registered with the regulator.
• Coinbase said it was slashing its workforce by 1,100 employees, or about 18% of its staff [14 Jun 2022]
  • company says it had grown too quickly and a potential recession “could lead to another crypto winter.”

Presence in Singapore

“We see Singapore as a strategic market and a global hub for Web3 innovation,” said Hassan Ahmed, Coinbase’s regional director for Southeast Asia. [Oct 2022]

As of October 2022, Coinbase has nearly 100 employees in Singapore, with product engineers forming the largest bulk of hires.

• Entity: Coinbase Singapore Pte. Ltd. (“Coinbase SG”) (UEN: 201935002N)
• Location: One Marina Boulevard, #28-00, Singapore 018989.

Regulatory Compliance

Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)

In October 2023, Coinbase Singapore received a Major Payment Institution license from MAS to provide regulated Digital Payment Token (DPT) services.

View the legal user agreement for Singapore users.

Travel Rule

Effective September 5 2023, Coinbase will require additional counterparty information when a customer in Singapore receives a deposit from outside Coinbase or withdraws to a non-Coinbase destination address. Learn more.

Risk disclosure

Coinbase warns users could lose their crypto holdings if the company goes bankrupt

Disclosed in the quarterly report ended 31 March 2022, as required by rules enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Because custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors,” the company said."

It’s a different scenario from traditional investments. Many bank accounts, including checking and savings, are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for up to $250,000 per account if the bank goes under, while the Securities Investor Protection Corp. helps if a broker or dealer goes bankrupt.

Social media

• Facebook
• Telegram: Coinbase Singapore group
  • telegram-only offers, product updates, and market insights

Transparency

• public, audited financials confirm financial strength and ample liquidity
  • Coinbase largely holds assets in USD
• financial statements are public and released quarterly.

Ecosystem

Coinbase Earn

Coinbase Earn allows eligible customers to learn about different cryptocurrencies via educational content and earn a bit of that crypto. Just by watching a few videos about your favorite crypto and completing a short quiz to test your knowledge, you’ll be rewarded with a bit of that specific crypto.

Staking (Accredited Investor Opt-in Required)

In September 2024, Coinbase announced that incoming regulatory changes require staking products and services to be restricted for retail users from October 2024.

Going forward, Coinbase Singapore can only offer staking products and services to users who opt in as accredited investors. For avoidance of doubt, these incoming changes will not impact USDC Rewards where this service has been made available to users.

Here are the criteria to qualify as an accredited investor for individuals:

• Income Criteria: Minimum income of S$300,000 (or its equivalent in a foreign currency) in the last 12 months; or
• Net Personal Assets: Net personal assets exceeding S$2 million (or its equivalent in a foreign currency), with the net value of the primary place of residence contributing up to S$1 million (or its equivalent in a foreign currency); or
• Net Financial Assets: Net financial assets exceeding S$1 million (or its equivalent in a foreign currency).

Trading platforms

• Android
• iOS
• Web

✔️ Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

FAST bank transfer support

Announced in March 2023, customers in Singapore can FAST transfer funds to and from their Coinbase accounts using any bank in Singapore for free.

Publicly listed company

Being public listed on NASDAQ, Coinbase is a regulated financial institution.

Singpass sign-up support

From March 2023, Singapore users can use Singpass to join the platform.

USD transfers via SWIFT network

Coinbase announced in December 2023 that Singapore customers can transfer United States Dollars (USD) to and from their Coinbase accounts using the SWIFT network.

Benefits:

• 1:1 conversion between USD:USDC with no fees.
• Earn up to 5.05 % APY on your USDC holdings, with no lockups or maximum limit.
• No FX markups when trading using USD.

Usage Notes and Tips

Coinbase only supports buying and not selling for Singapore users, but you shouldn’t be overly concerned.

Some definitions first: ‘Buy/Sell’ in the crypto world refers to using fiat money to purchase crypto assets and selling crypto assets to get fiat money back. ‘Swap/Convert’ on the other hand, refers to exchanging one crypto currency for another, like some some of barter. It is common to get confused between these terms in the beginning.

For the Singapore market, Coinbase allows “Buy”, which means supporting the purchase of crypto assets using credit or debit cards. It does not allow “Sell” which is to sell your crypto assets in exchange for fiat money.

I feel this is not a big issue as investors can easily transfer crypto assets into Coinbase from other platforms, and perform trading. For example, you can transfer USDC in from another exchange and use it swap for cryptocurrencies available on Coinbase platform.

Received FREE alt coins from completing mini-courses

Coinbase has a feature named ‘Learning Rewards’ where users can learn about alt coins, answer some simple quiz questions, and receive airdrops.

These are some of the airdrops I received:

• September 2024
  • VeChain (VET): US$12. It was a convoluted process to receive this VET airdrop. Describing briefly below:
    • I first answered some simple quiz questions to receive $2 worth of VET.
    • Coinbase then required me to create an external VeWorld wallet and send any amount of VET from Coinbase to it in order to receive a further $10 worth of VET.
    • The tricky part is Coinbase required me to verify I had control of the VeWorld wallet before allowing me to send VET to it. The verification step was to send VET from the VeWorld wallet to Coinbase first. But the newly created VeWorld wallet had zero balance in it.
    • I ended up having to use my Crypto.com account to buy VET and VTHO (gas token for VeChain), send them to my VeWorld wallet, so that I can send some VET from the VeWorld wallet into Coinbase.
    • Finally after Coinbase was satisfied that I was the owner and in control of the VeWorld wallet, I was allowed to send some VET from Coinbase to the VeWorld wallet.
  • ZetaChain (ZETA): US$3
• Dec 2022
  • AMP (AMP): US$3
• Nov 2022
  • Near (NEAR): US$3
  • Chain (XCN): US$3
• August 2022
  • HOPR (HOPR): US$3
  • Aleph.im (ALEPH): US$3
• Jan 2022
  • Fetch (FET): US$3
• Nov 2021
  • Loopring (LRC): US$1.50
• Sep 2021
  • Ankr (ANKR): USD$3
• Jun 2021
  • Polygon (MATIC): USD$3
• May 2021
  • SKL (SKALE Token): USD$3
• Apr 2021
  • FORTH (Ampleforth Governance Token): USD$3
• Mar 2021
  • UMA (Universal Market Access): USD$6
  • NMR (Numeraire): USD$3
• Feb 2021
  • NU (NuCypher): USD$3
  • COMP (Compound): USD$9
  • XLM (Stellar Lumens): USD$10
• Jan 2021
  • GRT (The Graph): USD$3
  • CGLD (Celo): USD$6