The leading U.S. marketplace for cryptocurrencies has been quietly preparing for a monster increase in trading volume.
In a reply to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s inquiry into exchanges, Coinbase stated that it has doubled the size of its full-time technology staff and has overhauled much of the platform’s code.
Remember last year when Coinbase (and many others) froze under the onslaught of new crypto investors? The changes they’ve made has increased Coinbase’s surge capacity by 1000% — and they expect to double it again in the coming months.
According to COO Asiff Hirji, growing demand for cryptocurrency has made this all a necessity.
“More people are starting to realize that this is foundational and you have the best and brightest in crypto running to build applications,” said Hirji. “If you believe that, It’s not surprising to see ever increasing volumes and record transactions.”
With more large entities such as Goldman Sachs preparing to enter the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency market space, Coinbase is hoping they can be ahead of the game this time around, and capitalize on the influx of new money. New records for uptime are only a part of that.
“We are proud to have delivered 99.97% uptime to users of the platform in the period January 1 to present, and 99.99% uptime in the month of April,” Coinbase said.
Improved servers and uptime will only help Coinbase continue to grow. The company’s valuation has recently been as high as $8 billion, up from the previous one of $1.6 billion. To date, Coinbase has facilitated more than $150 billion in trades over their platform, and has received more than $225 million in funding.
Last year saw the price of Bitcoin climb to an all-time high in the $20,000s, rising more than 1300%. While a similar rise this year isn’t guaranteed, if it does happen, hopefully no one will be stuck on the sidelines waiting months for their new Coinbase account to be approved.
