Convincing banks about Bitcoin is 'challenging'

People would read about Bitcoin and think how do we buy some. They would Google it and we were the first result, co-founder Brian Armstrong told the Telegraph. We want to make Bitcoin easier to use. We tried to just make it super-simple.

The company claims to have the largest market share of online wallets, 24 per cent - a claim disputed by competitor Blockchain.info, which unlike Coinbase counts each individual wallet as a user, despite many people having more than one.

Coinbase wont release exact figures but Armstrong confirms that it looks after hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.

Originally launched in the US, it recently announced that it had secured banking and regulatory approval to launch in Europe, opening its services up to 18 new markets. But the UK was not among them.

The main hurdles for it to enter a new market are banks and regulation. You cant set up in a country unless Bitcoin payments are legal, and you cant handle business unless you can get a bank account. And they are struggling to get a UK bank account.

Even though many people see Bitcoin as undermining the two institutions of big finance and government, which in a sense it does, it is also beholden to them - at least, it is if you want a legitimate, easy-to-use, commercial payment system.

Getting banks on board is challenging, admits Armstrong, who points out that there are no British lenders currently offering accounts to Bitcoin startups. In other markets it has taken six months of meetings just to get them comfortable.

These banks are usually quite sceptical. Thats a hard, difficult process that involves a lot of meetings, he says. Coinbase hopes to launch on these shores soon. We have to be patient. It could happen in a week or ten years, he adds.

Europes retailers are lagging behind the US with Bitcoin adoption, but Coinbase hopes to grow the number of wallets here over the next six months and using that to convince shops of the benefits of taking crypto-currencies. Thats the same play book it followed in the US.

If our work pays off, itll be happening, says Armstrong.

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Convincing banks about Bitcoin is 'challenging'