The big news in the bitcoin world today is that Coinbase has raised another mega-round of funding. But it’s not the dollar figure – $75 million – or the reported valuation – approximately $490 million – that are the most significant developments here for the company (or the industry). Where Coinbase really moved the needle is in adding the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to its list of investors, as well as several large banks and former financial services executives.
Coinbase has been on a roll of late, growing its consumer wallet accounts from 600,000 to 2.1 million in 2014, and seeing its merchant adoption swell to 38,000 users including household names like Dell, Overstock, and Expedia, not to mention integrating with payments giants PayPal (via Braintree) and Stripe. But with the bitcoin ecosystem continuing to face the glare of global regulatory uncertainty and with prominent platforms like Mt. Gox and more recently BitStamp suffering costly security breaches, the knowledge sharing and credibility boost coming out of this investor syndicate should go a long way toward easing many lingering doubts.
