BUIDL trademark ‘100% defensive’ as Coinbase moves to educate investors

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After dropping their controversial filing for trademark protection of the phrase ‘BUIDL’, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) has justified its decision to originally file as a “100% defensive move” against patent trolls.

The news emerged that Coinbase had withdrawn its application, just days after it was publicly disclosed for the first time. In a tweet addressing the issue, Balaji S. Srinivasan, CTO at Coinbase, confirmed the company was no longer pursuing the trademark for BUIDL, noting: “TLDR is that @brian_armstrong & I don’t believe in trademarks for stuff like this so we’ll be giving this one back to the community.”

“In more detail: the team had no intention to prevent the community from using it. There had been thought of a feature named Coinbase BUIDL and they didn’t want to attract patent trolls for a common term. Was 100% defensive filing,” he added.

Saw the commotion on Twitter & dug into this. Coinbase filed the trademark for BUIDL some time back. I learned about it today & chatted with team. TLDR is that @brian_armstrong & I don’t believe in trademarks for stuff like this so we’ll be giving this one back to the community.

— Balaji (@balajis) December 6, 2018

The development coincides with the announcement of a new service at Coinbase, dubbed Coinbase Earn, which will enable users to earn crypto will learning about cryptocurrency.

In a press release, Coinbase said one of the biggest barriers to investment in cryptocurrencies was a perceived lack of knowledge, explaining, “Many of the people we spoke to expressed a strong desire to begin learning about new and different crypto assets beyond Bitcoin, but didn’t know where to begin.”

The service will reward users in 0x tokens for completing educational tasks and digesting freely available content—open to Coinbase users and, interestingly, the non-users alike. Some analysts have suggested this hints at Coinbase’s true intentions, which is in reality creating an ‘illusion of competence’ for new investors in a bid to drive up spending.

New investors are more likely to part with money once they feel they know and understand an asset class, particularly in the case of cryptocurrencies. Especially at a time of increasingly rocky trading for cryptocurrencies like BTC, their suspicions seem well-founded.

However, given the depth and unpredictability of crypto markets, it is less certain that the Coinbase training content will lead to more sophisticated investment decisions.