Brian Armstrong, the CEO and Founder of popular US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has often been known for being an accessible point in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. In fact, Coinbase offers a decent amount of educational classes and courses, not to mention payment for learning about different assets, for users both new and old.
Now, it seems that Armstrong is increasing that accessibility, even more, thanks to a new patent that, despite being filed in March of 2015, has finally been granted to him and his company. The patent consists of a technology that would allow users to request cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin via an email address instead of a wallet address. This could be significant, considering wallet addresses are often confusing, long batches of numbers and letters that one could easily get wrong.
However, this process takes two days to go through, and the assets would then be held in a vault that only the owner of the email address could access, according to CoinDesk. It’s also worth noting that this system wouldn’t charge transaction fees. Rather, Coinbase would pay for them itself.
Implementation of this system would be a small but important step towards accessibility. The easier it is for non-tech minded people to access and use cryptocurrencies, the faster we’ll see more and more people converge into the space.
