Coinbase, the US-based cryptocurrency wallet and exchange platform backed by several corporate investors, raised $100m yesterday in a series D round led by venture capital firm Institutional Venture Partners.
Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32 and Draper Associates also participated in the round, which according to TechCrunch valued Coinbase at $1.6bn post-money.
Founded in 2012, Coinbase has built an online wallet and trading platform for digital currencies Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. It has been responsible for the trading of $25bn of currency and has been boosted by ever growing valuations of all three currencies.
Bitcoin reached a peak price of $3,000 in June this year, almost five times its price when Coinbase last raised money in July 2016. The price of Litecoin has risen tenfold in less than five months while the price of Ethereum has shot up even more steeply.
Coinbase will use the series D capital to boost its engineering and customer support teams, further develop Toshi, its Ethereum network browser, and open a digital asset exchange office in New York.
The round has increased the company’s overall funding to more than $215m, its last round bringing in $10.5m from financial services firm Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, its Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ subsidiary and VC firm Sozo Ventures.
Coinbase raised $75m in a 2015 series C round featuring Docomo Capital, a corporate venturing subsidiary of mobile network NTT Docomo, as well as trading exchange operator New York Stock Exchange and financial services firms USAA and BBVA.
DFJ Growth, existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Ribbit Capital, and angel investors Vikram Pandit and Tom Glocer also took part in the 2015 round, which valued Coinbase at $490m. The company’s earlier investors include SV Angel, Y Combinator and Fundersclub.