Coinbase has recently completed a $100 million Series D funding round, which featured investment from IVP, Draper Associates, Greylock Partners, and others. The company made the announcement via a blog post from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and notified its customers by email. Coinbase has confirmed that the funding will be used to expand its operations.
According to the Armstrong post, the company plans to scale in several important areas:
“We’ll be using this new funding to continue scaling even further. Specifically, we will:
1. Increase the size of our engineering and customer support teams to improve the customer experience.
2. Open a GDAX office in New York City, further investing in our ability to serve institutions and professional traders.
3. Invest in Toshi, to help accelerate digital currency’s shift from speculative investment to global payment network.”
With this latest round of investment, the company is now being valued at the $1 billion mark – making it the first digital currency start-up to achieve that feat. Coinbase had reportedly been in talks to secure this funding several months ago, so this latest announcement was not entirely unexpected.
The company’s CEO also used the announcement to extol his industry’s growth. Noting the accelerating pace of innovation, Armstrong said that Coinbase is now preparing to make the transition to “phase three” of the company’s “secret master plan” – a strategy that he outlined in another blog post in September 2016.
