[2018-04-16] Coinbase Acquires Earn.com for an Estimated $100 Million

[DeadCoin]

Coinbase has completed the acquisition of Earn.com, an app that lets users get cryptocurrency for answering emails and completing tasks. The Earn startup team joins the company and the founder will serve as its first CTO, as part of the deal.

Coinbase’s Latest Acquisition

Coinbase Acquires Earn.com for an Estimated $100 MillionSan Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced today that it has acquired Earn.com (formerly known as 21 Inc). As we reported in the past, the service allows senders to pay users in cryptocurrency to reply to emails and complete tasks. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: “We’re going to be doubling down on the Earn business within Coinbase, as they have built a paid email product that is arguably one of the earliest practical blockchain applications to achieve meaningful traction.”

https://news.bitcoin.com/coinbase-acquires-earn-com-for-an-estimated-100-million/?utm_source=OneSignal%20Push&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=Push%20Notifications

[Theb]

This might be a good news (depending on how Coinbase will handle things) for Earn.Com users and that is including me. Overall I had a bad experience with the site, when it comes to completing the task, answering of surveys/emails the site runs smooth but when it comes to the withdrawal and payment they usually have problems, the support are not responsive, and sometimes I need to send multiple emails in order to get a reply. Also some of the tasks I finished don't reflect any payment/BTC on my account. I also heard reports that they are blocking accounts without any reason, although I don't have personal experience with it, a lot of user are complaining about this issue.

Coinbase purchasing the site will give an overhaul with the management as well as their system as some of their tasks are really not paying what they intended to pay. Hopefully they listen to the consumers this time as Earn.Com don't have a really good reputation to start with.

[vit05]

I have been a user of earn.com for quite some time. They provide a very interesting service. But I found this acquisition curious. Perhaps because they have many investors in common, it may have been interesting to both.

But coinbase just received financial contributions and had announced that it would start investing in startups working with cryptocurrency. To make an acquisition of this level, in these values they escape a little of what they had announced.

[jhenfelipe]

IMO this acquisition will attract more people to use Earn, considering the number of Coinbase users out there. It would be interesting to see what will happen next ~ Coinbase + Earn.com

Coinbase blog: Welcome Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase’s new Chief Technology Officer
Earn.com blog: Earn.com joins Coinbase

[veleten]

IMO this acquisition will attract more people to use Earn, considering the number of Coinbase users out there. It would be interesting to see what will happen next ~ Coinbase + Earn.com

Coinbase blog: Welcome Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase’s new Chief Technology Officer
Earn.com blog: Earn.com joins Coinbase

or maybe Coinbase will learn how not to congest the mempool
and not to undermine their own business due to incompetence:
https://btcmanager.com/coinbase-fire-bitcoin-mempool-spamming/
https://www.ccn.com/coinbase-criticized-spamming-bitcoin-mempool-ceo-responds/
but all in  all its a good move for both parties,although I would rather see more big players like Coinbase emerge so they won't not become a monopoly in this sector

[odolvlobo]

That's crazy. What could earn.com have that is worth $100 million?

[Xavofat]

Wow, that's ridiculous.  Crypto companies already pull in an excessive amount of investments from people's hope that they'll end up very successful, but Coinbase is a serious company.

Maybe any blockchain application which appears to be successful is good enough for them to acquire, but it looks like they've got bigger plans which we're not aware of yet.  Especially since they hired Srivivasan from Earn as their CTO.

Hopefully they listen to the consumers this time as Earn.Com don't have a really good reputation to start with.

If there's one thing Coinbase has become notorious for, it's their bad support.  Plenty of posts and articles have been made about it. 

[gentlemand]

Don't get it. In what world do these people live?

21 took over $100 million of someone else's money and came up with a Raspberry Pi with a bit of software on it. They probably sold a few hundred. 

How far would you get in the real business world with a track record like that? I wonder when the crypto and internet based stuff will ever bear a relation to reality. The day must be coming.

[BitHodler]

How far would you get in the real business world with a track record like that? I wonder when the crypto and internet based stuff will ever bear a relation to reality. The day must be coming.

It's ego versus ego, plus a wealthy status thanks to where crypto stands right now in terms of their prices. Also, it hurts way less if you can spend someone else's money than making yourself pay for it entirely.

It's basically how back in the days domains were bought for insane amounts, while technically, the purpose of the domain in most cases didn't yield anything of significant nature.

It's probably more of a brand and market extension than something actually meant to book profits with. If Coinbase was purely interested in profits, they could use that capital for their ETF fund and yield 100x more years later.

[gentlemand]

It's probably more of a brand and market extension than something actually meant to book profits with. If Coinbase was purely interested in profits, they could use that capital for their ETF fund and yield 100x more years later.

This is an area that really intrigues me. No doubt there'll be vastly huger returns in simply parking the money in coins but they must all be looking at 10-20 years in the future when I could well imagine Coinbase being bigger than Jesus if they play it right.

I'd love to know the proportion of VC funding that produces an actual return. I presume it's a minuscule percentage but the winners must win huge.

And there must be someone somewhere keeping track of the VC investments in crypto so far. I'm sure it would make for seriously ugly reading.

[Carlton Banks]

That's crazy. What could earn.com have that is worth $100 million?

Don't get it. In what world do these people live?

21 took over $100 million of someone else's money and came up with a Raspberry Pi with a bit of software on it. They probably sold a few hundred.  

What I'm about to say is pure speculation, but.....


You guys are 100% right, 21.co & Earn.com are garbage companies that likely lost alot of money, and they can only have very little revenue or assets. $100 million is hilarious sum considering the publicly available facts. If you think about how much actual cash Coinbase could possibly have available to afford to spend on acquisitions, it makes even less sense, unless......


....Coinbase are buying Earn.com to conduct some kind of accounting fraud, i.e. hiding profits, or borrowing money, something like that? If so, Coinbase could be setting themselves up for a potential Mt.Gox situation. Anyone reading Bitcointalk.org probably knows already, but if you have a Coinbase account, best to minimize or fully bail on your exposure to Coinbase.

[Lucius]

That's crazy. What could earn.com have that is worth $100 million?

Don't get it. In what world do these people live?

21 took over $100 million of someone else's money and came up with a Raspberry Pi with a bit of software on it. They probably sold a few hundred.  

What I'm about to say is pure speculation, but.....


You guys are 100% right, 21.co & Earn.com are garbage companies that likely lost alot of money, and they can only have very little revenue or assets. $100 million is hilarious sum considering the publicly available facts. If you think about how much actual cash Coinbase could possibly have available to afford to spend on acquisitions, it makes even less sense, unless......


....Coinbase are buying Earn.com to conduct some kind of accounting fraud, i.e. hiding profits, or borrowing money, something like that? If so, Coinbase could be setting themselves up for a potential Mt.Gox situation. Anyone reading Bitcointalk.org probably knows already, but if you have a Coinbase account, best to minimize or fully bail on your exposure to Coinbase.

Very interesting thinking,but although it seems that Coinbase maybe have some hidden agenda with this acquisition,is it possible that they only buying
Earn.com just to prevent anyone else from doing so?For a company such as Coinbase 100$ million is a fairly small amount of money,and they probably have some reasons why they did it.

Although I do not understand why top world cryptocurrency exchange/wallet is buying one average site for surveys, simple tasks and similar trivial things.Just for "paid email product that is arguably one of the earliest practical blockchain applications to achieve meaningful traction".I guess it's worth 100$ million

[Carlton Banks]

I already said that $100 million is probably quite a significant amount of cash to Coinbase. Why would they spend that much money, whether it's low to them or not, to stop others from buying a company that's all liabilities and no assets? There's not even a brand name, they've basically bought a bunch of debt.

Great plan: spending $100 million on a loser, just so you can pay the loser's bills. You've gotta spend money to lose (even more) money, right!? Riiiight

[Lucius]

I already said that $100 million is probably quite a significant amount of cash to Coinbase. Why would they spend that much money, whether it's low to them or not, to stop others from buying a company that's all liabilities and no assets? There's not even a brand name, they've basically bought a bunch of debt.

Great plan: spending $100 million on a loser, just so you can pay the loser's bills. You've gotta spend money to lose (even more) money, right!? Riiiight

I was thinking that 100$ million for them is not big money,since they have more then 1 Billion $ revenue in 2017,and they obviously show that it is not a problem for them.When I read article from this post,I notice that Coinbase is raised 100$ million from investors some 10 months ago-could this have some connection with this investment or it's just a coincidence?

I think that this acquisition is strange to us because we do not know what this is really about,I'm sure they did not throw 100$ million in the wind.

[Carlton Banks]

1. $1 billion revenue is not $1 billion profit
2. $100 million is 10% of $1 billion

10% of yearly net revenue is not a small amount to spend on something that's gonna cost more money and produce zero money.

[Kloosterboer]

I would like to see changes after this acquisition to be honest. The performance of Earn.com doesn't seem to be perfect and must be fixed

[Lucius]

1. $1 billion revenue is not $1 billion profit
2. $100 million is 10% of $1 billion

10% of yearly net revenue is not a small amount to spend on something that's gonna cost more money and produce zero money.

I hope you are not thinking I do not know that revenue is not pure profit for Coinbase and that 100$ million is 10% of 1 billion $?

If you read article I posted,Coinbase have no problem with money at all-their shares are actually very wanted and at any time they can get hundreds of millions of dollars on their account.You think they wasted all that money just like that,I suppose you have some better insider information then ones you share here.

[Carlton Banks]

I hope you are not thinking I do not know that revenue is not pure profit for Coinbase and that 100$ million is 10% of 1 billion $?

What I'm saying is: spending >10% of last year's profit on a company with debts and no assets is not something Coinbase can afford to do every day. They run out of money in less than 10 days that way. I don't need any insider information to perform basic arithmetic like that.

[Deepak Singh Rawat]

Earn.com coinbase
Earn.com coinbase and the team of David Marcus & Rachel Horowitz[url][https://cryptobitcoin.gold/earn-com-coinbase//url]