My colleague Joel told me he doesn’t own any bitcoin right now. Instead he has a “USD Wallet” on Coinbase and when he needs to spend or send bitcoin, he just does that out of his USD wallet.
So I decided to set one up myself. I now have three accounts on Coinbase. A bitcoin denominated wallet, a USD denominated wallet, and the vault where I keep most of my bitcoin (I don’t own much, around 30 bitcoin in total).
The recent slump in price for Bitcoin revives the issue for many of the price volatility of owning bitcoin. Some want that. They are speculators who think the price of Bitcoin will increase substantially as the technology is broadly adopted. That may well happen. But others, like me, hold bitcoin so that I can use to it spend money and send money. For them, having their bitcoin denominated in dollars makes a lot of sense. Joel is one of those people. I could become one, but for now I’m happy to do it both ways.
Coinbase has had a USD wallet since October 2014, but it has not been available in many states as a result of regulatory issues. Coinbase recently added New York State customers to the USD wallet which is why I was able to add it to my account.
If you own a lot of bitcoin and are concerned about price volatility, you might consider putting it in a dollar denominated account on Coinbase. You can still do everything with your bitcoin you want to do, but you can now do it in dollars. If you have stayed away from bitcoin because of the price issues, you now have a way to “pay with bitcoin” without taking price risk.
If you want to try it you visit your account or set up an account at Coinbase.
