Coinbase aces into 'Unicorn' status with $100M fresh funding

Cryptocurrency startup, Coinbase has raised $100 million in Series D funding. The round was led by IVP, with participation from Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32 and Draper Associates. This officially makes it the bitcoin industry’s first billion-dollar startup. The latest round of funding raises Coinbase’s collective funding to date to more than $217 million, which, according to CoinDesk is higher than any other industry firm that has raised money from accredited investors. According to Brian Armstrong, Co-founder and CEO, Coinbase, the startup has experienced unprecedented growth over the last year, and has exchanged over $25 billion USD of digital currency for its customers so far. He further stated that the funding will be used to continue scaling and to: a) Increase the size of our engineering and customer support teams to improve the customer experience. b) Open a GDAX office in New York City, further investing in our ability to serve institutions and professional traders. c) Invest in Toshi, to help accelerate digital currency’s shift from speculative investment to global payment network.

“Digital currencies are having their “Netscape” moment. The pace of innovation has been accelerating and we are now seeing exciting projects and companies being built on top of digital currencies. We’re beginning to transition into phase three of our secret master plan,” Armstrong quoted in the Medium blog.

Funded in 2012, Coinbase has raised two of the industry’s largest funding rounds. In early 2015, the startup had raised $77 million in a Series C funding round from a group of investors that included the New York Stock Exchange and Fortune 500 financial services group USAA. In the meantime, it also raised $10.5 million from Mitsubishi UFJ. Last week, Filecoin, a blockchain-based storage network and cryptocurrency, raised $52 million from investors. The company is poised to raise millions more on Thursday when it begins selling units of its bitcoin-like cryptocurrency to a larger set of wealthy investors like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. This figure further swelled after to an estimated $200 million from accredited investors after Filecoin opened its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) yesterday. According to data from the CoinDesk ICO Tracker, roughly $1.7 billion has been invested through the ICO model to date, indicating that the Filecoin sale could push this figure past the $2 billion mark.