Coinbase now valued at $8 bn

5 years ago - Published in Fintech Land

One of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, the U.S.-based Coinbase, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $300 million in a new round of financing.

The U.S. company said this Series E investment was led by Tiger Global with participation from Y Combinator’s Continuity fund and Wellington Management — a $1 trillion fund that recently got into crypto — alongside Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain among others.

The deal takes Coinbase to $525 million from investors to date, while the valuation represents a huge jump on the $1.6 billion it was deemed to be worth when it previously raised — that was $100 million back in August 2017.

Coinbase says it will use the funds to accelerate global expansion, introduce more crypto assets to its platform and continue development of utility applications in the space, such as its recently announced USDC stablecoin and the Coinbase Wallet. Finally, the company plans to bring more institutional funds into the crypto space.

“We see Coinbase’s growth as validation that the ecosystem will only continue to grow in size, influence and impact — ultimately ushering in a more open financial system for the world,” the company said in a blog post.

The capital will also go towards “the groundwork to support thousands” more tokens in the future. Coinbase currently allows trading to just a handful of cryptocurrencies, but it has long harbored ambitions to expand beyond that. Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September, CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that he sees a future in which every cap table will have its own token. Based on that, he said he believes that Coinbase could host hundreds of tokens within “years” and even potentially “millions” in the future.

Coinbase recently introduced a USDC stablecoin earlier this month and it plans to offer further ‘utility applications’ this like this in future, Asiff Hirji — Coinbase present and COO — said in the blog post announcing the new funding.

At Disrupt, Armstrong also said he would love to one day run a public company. It remains to be seen what the company’s long-term plan for an IPO is.