In our ongoing quest to make Coinbase simpler, we’ve made some hard product decisions and will be rolling out a few changes in the next several weeks. We try a lot of new ideas at Coinbase, but we also value a product that is free from clutter. This requires us to periodically take a hard look at which features are being used, and do some housekeeping.
Here’s is the list of upcoming product changes:
Removing support for Bits: Bits is a way to view bitcoin in smaller units. Coinbase will discontinue supporting bits as a bitcoin unit starting March 21st, 2017. Customers who have set bits as their default Bitcoin unit will be automatically be migrated to BTC. We found that this feature was rarely used and added confusion when sending and receiving bitcoin transactions.
Disabling SMS account access: Coinbase will discontinue SMS support for accessing Coinbase accounts on March 21st, 2017. When we launched SMS access 4 years ago, smartphones were still a novelty in many parts of the world, but with the rapid growth of smartphones, we feel that our iOS and Android app can provide a much better experience.
Disabling user payment pages: Coinbase will discontinue support for user payment pages on March 21st, 2017. When we launched Payment pages in May 2014, we were just beginning the development of our mobile apps and there was no easy way for customers to receive payments. Coinbase mobile apps now enable customers to easily receive payments.
Network transaction fees: We will discontinue paying network transaction fees for on-chain transactions starting March 21st, 2017. Network transaction fees do not go to Coinbase, they go to the miners of the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks. Since our inception, we have been paying network fees on behalf of our customers to help support the growth of the bitcoin and ethereum networks. We now have over 6 million users worldwide, and this has become a significant cost. Fees will be assigned dynamically based on the current network conditions and will be paid by customers when they send an on-chain transaction. Transactions between Coinbase accounts will continue to be off-chain and free.
To fulfill our mission of creating an open financial system for the world, we will continue to experiment with new and innovative products. If you have any suggestions on what we should look at next, please reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook, or send us a message at support@coinbase.com
EDIT: There was some confusion about disabling SMS account access. We are removing the ability to access your account information and send digital currency via SMS. You will still be able to use SMS for 2 factor authentication to login to your account.
