Ehrsam is a 25 year old Duke graduate who worked as an asset manager and investor for Goldman Sachs before he founded his company. His company is named Coinbase, it is essentially a virtual wallet for Bitcoin. It functions the same way as Pay Pal but uses a different currency. Bitcoin for those of you who do not know, is a new form of virtual currency. It is used globally and about $1.5 Billion worth of Bitcoins are in circulation. The major problem with Bitcoin is that it is very volatile, when the new currency was introduced, it was valued at $1200, now it is down to just over $330. Ehrsam is working to help provide more security to Coinbase users by allowing the user to instantly sell the Bitcoins when they are received to avoid deflation and the varying prices. Coinbase, makes it easier for companies to make large payments more easily as well as make transactions with foreign companies and dealing with exchange rates. Coinbase is available in 19 different countries as of now and is looking to expand. Ehrsam is attempting to make Bitcoin more mainstream. He has used the same model as Pay Pal but has put his own spin on it, Coinbase

allows the user to save their Bitcoins using the vault portion of the app. The vault is set up in a way that the currency can be stored safely, as well as allowing you and your business partner, or whoever you share the account with to cosign withdrawals digitally to avoid users to make unauthorized withdrawals. There are about 37,000 business that trust and accept Bitcoin, but the problem is that there are not enough users of this new currency. I’m interested to see where this business takes Ehrsam. Coinbase has almost 2 million users so far and is the “World’s most popular Bitcoin service.” Pay Pal is very successful and Elon Musk has moved on to bigger and better things, I’m wondering if Ehrsam will do the same, and his company will keep expanding, or if Coinbase will fail because of Bitcoin’s unpopularity and constantly changing exchange value.