San Francisco-based Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, is opening a Portland office in an effort to bolster customer support.
According to job listings on its website, the company is establishing a “Center of Excellence” in the Rose City to centralize customer support. Coinbase has more than 100 jobs posted on its website, five are in Portland, including manager of customer support, office manager, support analyst and systems administrator.
It’s unclear how many employees will work in Portland, though sources have told the Business Journal the local office could house 70 to more than 100 employees, and that the initial office is slated to open in the Power + Light Building at 920 S.W. 6th Ave.
Coinbase did not confirm details of the Portland office in time to meet the Business Journal's publication deadline.
Eric Haskins, managing director with JLL, which is leasing the Power + Light space for the building owner, said that the firm has inked almost 74,000 square feet of new leases in the building so far this year. That includes a roughly 70,000-square-foot lease that WeWork signed in February. Haskins also said there has been plenty of activity from prospects sizing up Power + Light’s remaining vacancy — about 110,000 square feet — but he could not disclose any information about those prospects.
Coinbase was founded in 2012 and has raised $217 million from investors. Backers include the venture firms Andreesen Horowitz and Union Square, and Spanish banking giant BBVA. The company offers a digital currency wallet for clients and a platform to trade the cryptocurrencies bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum and litecoin. Coinbase has more than 20 million customers and more than $150 billion worth of digital currency have been exchanged on its platform.
These digital currencies are built on blockchain technology, a decentralized public ledger that enables transactions without a central bank or government participation.
A recent Washington Post profile of Coinbase chronicled the company's rapid ascent — and its growing pains, highlighting customer service issues including transaction delays. The Portland outpost is an effort to address those concerns.
In a blog post earlier this month, Tina Bhatnagar, Coinbase's vice president of operations and technology, said that opening a customer support office in Portland is part of the company’s 90-day plan to address “the most pressing operational issues that were interfering with our ability to scale our customer support to meet demand.”
She wrote that a dedicated support office would open in Portland in late May and another office would open by the end of summer in Europe.
Coinbase is the latest big tech company to open a sizeable customer service office in Portland. Nearly 700 workers are employed in customer care roles in the city with tech companies including the short-term rental marketplace Airbnb, website maker Squarespace, ticket seller SeatGeek, virtual assistant app Accompany and the online marketplace Mercari.