Coinbase Expands to Canada and Singapore to ‘Spur Mainstream Bitcoin Adoption’

Leading bitcoin exchange and wallet provider Coinbase has expanded its services to Canada and Singapore as a part of its project to expand their services globally. Now, consumers in Singapore are able to buy and sell bitcoin for Singapore dollars through Coinbase.

This follows the company’s announcement from ealier this week that Coinbase users based in Canada will be able to buy and sell bitcoin with Canadian dollars instantly, using the Coinbase Wallet. Additionally, users will be able to buy and sell bitcoin with a Canadian bank account directly and trade BTC/CAD on Coinbase’s exchange.

“Our mission at Coinbase is to spur mainstream bitcoin adoption, which we’ve set out to achieve by providing people with a simple, secure on-ramp to the bitcoin world,” Sam Rosenblum, international expansion lead at Coinbase told Bitcoin Magazine. “By expanding our wallet and exchange services to Canada, we’re getting bitcoin into the hands of even more people globally and, by extension, helping to drive growth of the entire Bitcoin network.”

As a celebration for the expansion of their services to Canada, Coinbase will waive conversion fees for Canadian customers until September 9.

“To celebrate the launch, Coinbase will waive its retail conversion fees for Canadian customers of the direct buy/sell service, available at Coinbase.com, through September 6 (11:59 Pacific time). Standard trading fees on Coinbase Exchange apply,” the Coinbase team announced.

Hackathon and Plans

Along with the announcement, Coinbase also has announced its plans to sponsor a hackathon at the University of Waterloo called “Hack the North hackathon.” As a commemoration of their expansion, Coinbase will award the group that best integrates and implements the API of Coinbase with US$1,000 in bitcoin and guaranteed interviews for an engineering internship at the company.

Coinbase has always been a keen supporter of bitcoin and blockchain hackathons worldwide. To date, it has sponsored multiple blockchain hackathons and offered prizes in bitcoin and participated as panelists and mentors.

The company also has recently begun to host its own bitcoin hackathons, dedicated for developers hoping to build innovative applications with bitcoin.

“We’re interested to see apps which highlight new use cases for Bitcoin, making bitcoin easier to use for wider audiences,” the Coinbase team announced.

The winner of the company’s second global hackathon, Mailman, received more than US$70,000 worth of prizes, US$10,000 of bitcoin and a guaranteed place at bitcoin- and virtual reality-focused Boost VC’s accelerator class. Mailman is an email paywall system which allows users to reward timely replies with bitcoin and filter spam using the blockchain, which Coinbase believes “taps into a core benefit of Bitcoin: permissionless innovation.”

Similar to its efforts for its own bitcoin hackathons and other competitions it has sponsored so far, Coinbase plans to actively assist Bitcoin startups in Canada by financing bitcoin hackathons in Canada, and by making it easier for Canadian merchants and bitcoin users to purchase and sell bitcoin easily.

Initially, the company decided to launch its bitcoin exchange to nine of the provinces in Canada, as their blog post reads: “Users in all Canadian provinces will have the ability to buy and sell bitcoin with CAD using the Coinbase Wallet, and those in 9 of 10 Canadian provinces can begin trading on Coinbase Exchange using the BTC/CAD currency pair.” However, James Watkins of Coinbase told Bitcoin Magazine, “We’ll be launching Coinbase Exchange nationwide on Monday as well.”

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