Coinbase Introduces Personal Payment Pages – A New Bitcoin Internet Land Grab

Like most of the world, I missed out on grabbing a first name Twitter handle as well as getting a Gmail account with just my full name.  Whether its domain names, email addresses, Twitter handles, or just user names on popular forums, the best ones are grabbed by the earliest adopters, leaving the rest of us in the cold.

Now we get a another chance with the launch of personal Payment Pages from Coinbase.  Created last week, Coinbase allows users to create a personal page for receiving payments under the coinbase.com/Grabagoodhandle URL.  For Coinbase, as one of the largest holders of consumer wallets, the program puts them in a strong position to solidify their presence as a leading destination for both buying and housing bitcoins.  In a way, Coinbase could be considered the AOL of bitcoin.  Similar to AOL’s position as the leading dial-up internet ISP due to its simplicity and offerings which led to “You’ve got mail” becoming part of US lexicon, Coinbase is quickly becoming the general population’s destination for dealing with bitcoins.

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Upon entering the page, the user’s QR readable bitcoin address is provided as well as an easy link for other Coinbase account holders to send free transfers.  Creating the personal payment page is accessible to Coinbase customers by clicking on user settings and entering a username.  Overall, it provides an easy destination to link to others for receiving bitcoins to your Coinbase account (you can see my page live on https://coinbase.com/ron).

As a new service, one of the notable aspects of the program is the availability of username.  As of publishing time, user handles that were throwing 404 errors and appeared to show their availability were: bitcoin, litecoin, forex, Boston, LasVegas, purple, black and TV.  Some first names were still available such as Iris, Patric and Jorge, but a great deal of them were grabbed already.