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Coinbase CEO Admits There Could Be Bugs in Ethereum Hard fork, Celebrates Combined Value of ETH and ETC

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:50 PM
Justin OConnell
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:50 PM

Brian Armstrong, founder and CEO of Coinbase, admitted on Twitter last week there could still be bugs in the Ethereum DAO. This comes after various tweets encouraging the hard fork as a means of updating blockchain systems.

“My hope is to see hard forks as an elegant upgrade/voting mechanism, not something to be feared that results in multiple coins,” Armstrong wrote on the popular social media platform.

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/755854156070424576

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/755853907654356993

“Easy to forget how many voices there were in the bitcoin company spreading FUD about the danger of hard forks,” he tweeted. “Here is one more success case.”

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/755853640456298496

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/755853340873854976

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/755853080634150912

He later tweeted: “Success! All seems to have gone well. Could still be bugs so far so good.”

Coinbase, based in San Francisco and founded in 2012, operates as well as Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) since may 2016.

The digital asset exchange company operates exchanges in bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets with fiat currencies in 3 countries, and bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries worldwide. Venture capital firms have invested approximately $100 million in the space.

The company boasts more than users and has served not only Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, Time Inc. and Wikipedia. The company rebranded itself as the Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) and begin to offer ether, the value token of Ethereum, for trade on its professional trading exchange service.

As Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) – Coinbase professional trading exchange service –  the company began to exchange ether, the native digital asset of Ethereum.

Armstrong, who has a computer security background, often tweets his opinions on Bitcoin and Ethereum matters. He is both a staunch proponent of a block size increase, as well as the recent hard fork to undo the DAO $56 million hack.

In a Medium  post this week, Armstrong acknowledged the inconsistencies in his tweets. Charlie Lee, founder of Litecoin and Director of Engineering at Coinbase, advised to delay the exchange’s launch of ethereum until after the hard fork. “This turned out to be a good decision,” Armstrong wrote.

He added:

We also discussed the possibility of replay attacks at that time. A number of other exchanges had created smart contracts to separate out ETH and ETC as it was withdrawn (I have to give credit to them for being ahead of us on this) and we considered delaying launch to set up something similar. But we knew the vast majority of Ethereum was stored in cold storage (where it would be safe from replays) if ETC ever became real.

Armstrong admitted ETC “got a bit more attention that I anticipated. While Armstrong anticipated that Classic would receive 1% in hashing power and price of the main Ethereum chain, “it ended up getting closer to 15%.”

Determining what to do on GDAX was more difficult. “Since GDAX had added Ethereum support prior to the hard fork, there were some customers storing ether there who may have wanted to get access to ETC as well. We had never made any announcement about supporting ETC, but we also felt like it wouldn’t be right to deprive them of that option if they wanted to move their ETC off the site (since they had moved it prior to the hard fork). “

Armstrong also seemed to indicate that the hard fork was partially successful in that, “the combined value of ETH + ETC is now higher than it was pre-fork…”

On popular crypto-currency exchanges, the volume of ETH has tanked, while the volume of ETC has increased.

Featured image from Ethereum.