On Tuesday, Asif Hirji, the president and chief operating officer of Coinbase, proclaimed in a blog post that the Coinbase crypto exchange attracted $300 million in the round-E of financing, estimating the company at higher than $8 billion.
In his blog publication, Hirji began by saying that Coinbase marks “a tremendous prospect in cryptocurrencies to build an additional version of the Internet (often called Web 3), and that this next stage may provide” control back in the hands of consumers, unleash a new era of innovation, and offer greater access to economic opportunities to more people around the world.”
After this, Hirji stated, that more funds in the amount of US $300 million were collected in the framework of the E series round under the leadership of Tiger Global Management “with the participation of Y Combinator Continuity, Wellington Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain and others.”
Hirji reports that the exchange will use these tools to accelerate global expansion in order to offer more crypto assets (“we see hundreds of cryptocurrencies that can be added today to our platform, and we will lay the foundation for supporting thousands in the future”). projects like the stablecoin USDC or Coinbase Wallet, as well as to create the functions necessary to obtain more cryptocurrency-related companies.
Even on its platform for professional investors, Coinbase Pro currently has practically only a few assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ether Classic (ETC), 0x (ZRX), and stablecoin USDC. One of the reasons that Coinbase currently supports so few cryptocurrencies is causing regulatory problems because the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not made it clear what crypto assets it considers to be securities. This is a strong impediment because Coinbase has not yet been approved by the SEC for selling what may be valued as an asset to retail investors.
Techcrunch reports that the latest investment of $ 300 million has raised the level of Coinbase investment to $ 525 million from investors, while the estimate represents a huge jump of $ 1.6 billion in cost, as the project was estimated in 2017 after receiving $ 100 million in support.
According to a Fortune report, a source close to Coinbase reported that “the company will also attract other investors in the near future through a secondary offer of $ 200 million or more, and this will serve as an incentive for some employees and early investors to withdraw assets to fiat, but would not change the total amount of capital raised by Coinbase. Fortune also reports that this round of E-series financing may indicate that the company may plan an IPO in 2019.
