In Brief:
- Tobias Lütke, founder of Shopify, will be the newest member in Coinbase Board of Directors.
- Coinbase is looking to expand its worldwide reach and develop new products.
- Shopify, serves millions of merchants in over 175 countries, is at the crossroads of finance and payments, web apps, and the internet itself.
In a recent blog post, Brian Armstrong revealed that Coinbase is looking to expand its worldwide reach and develop new products. Having “Tobi” Lütke on board, in his opinion, would be extremely useful to achieving that goal.
Armstrong emphasised that the newest member of the Board of Directors has created Shopify “from the ground up” and transformed it into a global commerce leader.
The move coincides with Coinbase’s efforts to expand its e-commerce operations and build a marketplace for nonfungible tokens, or digital art. Shopify allows businesses to create online storefronts and sell their products to customers, and it already takes cryptocurrency payments through Coinbase.
“Tobi’s experience as a founder and CEO, scaling his company from a small, niche online marketplace to what has become a critical backbone of global e-commerce, will help guide Coinbase as we seek to bring crypto to more people and businesses around the world,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote.
“The concepts of decentralised finance and entrepreneurship exemplify the promise of Web3 where opportunity exists for the many, not the few,” said Tobi Lutke. “Coinbase and Shopify share this like-minded vision, and I am excited to join the Board to support the future that Brian and the Coinbase team are building.”
Shopify, which serves millions of merchants in over 175 countries, is at the crossroads of three major sectors where crypto is attempting to revolutionise: finance and payments, web apps, and the internet itself.
Tobi, a natural builder, began programming computer code in his early teenage years. He quickly became involved in the open source community, contributing to Ruby on Rails, Liquid, and ActiveMerchant, among other projects.
Coinbase is gradually attempting to address the mass market, aiming to make bitcoin as intuitive and easy to use as an e-commerce site, with 73 million verified users in the third quarter. Coinbase recently teamed with Mastercard in an effort to get more people involved safely and securely while also making it easier for users to join the ecosystem.
