Coinbase Acquires Distributed Systems to Become the Facebook of Crypto

In a bid to become the Facebook of the crypto sector, Coinbase, the world’s largest exchange for buying and selling digital currencies, announced the acquisition of Distributed Systems, a three-year-old startup building identity standards for dApps known as the clear protocol on August 16, 2018. The Distributed Systems team, lead by Nikhil Srinivasan, will help Coinbase to form a Facebook-style login service.

Armstrong and Srinivasan

Both company heads took to Twitter to announce the partnership marking Coinbase’s strategic solidification in the crypto ecosystem. On August 16, 2018, Nikhil Srinivasan, CEO of Distributed Systems announced on the twitter:

1/ I’m thrilled to announce that Distributed Systems is joining the Coinbase family! Our team is excited to continue working on human-friendly, decentralized identities and permissioned tokens.https://t.co/nKdPVosIml

— 𝙉𝙄𝙆𝙃𝙄𝙇 (@nvs) August 15, 2018

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, made it official, with a welcome tweet on his Twitter wall.

We acquired an awesome team to work on decentralized identity 👌 welcome to @coinbase https://t.co/Xr6K24uuBr

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) August 16, 2018

The San Francisco-based startup of five members is renowned for its work in an area of blockchain-based digital identity security. A Medium page of the company describes the venture thusly: “Our shared mission is to build an open financial system for the world.”

According to Amstrong’s vision, the company wants to build an identity verification system that can be connected to any decentralized app while retaining control. Coinbase intends to roll out the login with the Coinbase-style platform as a software development kit that developers could integrate within their app.

“Decentralized identity will let you prove that you own an identity, or that you have a relationship with the Social Security Administration, without making a copy of that identity,” said B.Byrne, who’ll be looking after the newly acquired workforce.

“If you stretch your imagination a little further, you can imagine this applying to your photos, social media posts, and maybe one day your passport too.”

Facebook vs. Coinbase

Surprisingly, The acquisition news comes just a few days after BTCManager reported that David Marcus, the executive in charge of blockchain research at Facebook, resigned from his position on the exchange’s board of directors last week, seemingly to prevent the clash of interest.

That being said, the leading exchange appears to be a mammoth platform in the cryptoverse. To do so, the company has made eight acquisitions in the past six months including Earn.com.

Additionally, in the second quarter of this year, Coinbase has filled their bag with more than 60 employees for key roles including Head of Business Development, Head of Data Engineering, Vice-president of Financial Planning and Analysis, and more, according to the data on the company’s official blog.