A New Era for Earning Crypto? Coinbase Buys Earn, Takes CEO on as CTO

Will Coinbase users be able to earn cryptocurrency by doing simple, mundane tasks such as sending and receiving crypto from now on? Their acquisition of Earn.com, an online service doing just that – rewarding its users for receive paid messages from people outside their networks – may be a step in the right direction. Keeping Earn’s CEO on the team as a chief technology officer (CTO) seems to be just further proof to this.

Earn’s co-founder and CEO Balaji Srinivasan is not becoming just any chief technology officer at Coinbase, the U.S. headquartered company, one of the better-known digital wallet providers and owner of the GDAX exchange. He will be the very first one at the cryptocurrency exchange. Srinivasan used to be a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz before running Earn. Coinbase said their new CTO will act as “technological evangelist” for both the industry, and for Coinbase in his new role.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post, “Balaji has become one of the most respected technologists in the crypto field and is considered one of the technology industry’s few true originalists.”

Srinivasan holds PhD in Electrical Engineering and is a master of science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University, and has taught courses in data mining, stats, genomics, blockchain at his alma mater.

And although Srinivasan may mean wonders for the already well-established cryptocurrency exchange, the acquisition of Earn for reportedly USD 100 million may mean even more: since most exchange platforms are hypothetical for all intents and purposes, enabling user compensation for completing tasks will be a platform’s first real-world use.

Earn compensates users regardless of their country of origin or whether or not they have a bank account. Implementing this service may well pull naysayers into the crypto space and further blur the lines between the real world and crypto.