Funny how apparently the biggest Bitcoin company is a bank for centralized storage and management of Bitcoins, which was the exact opposite goal (according to the idealists) of bitcoins. Next up they'll probably offer interest and loans/mortgages.
Confirms for me that Bitcoin is on track to disrupt credit card payments, possibly ACH/Wire, and <i>not</i> to be a replacement currency. Credit cards handle about 3.6 trillion/year in transactions. With 3% per transaction fees, chargebacks and equipment costs -- there are plenty of reasons for merchants to increasingly accept BTC provided companies like Coinbase are prepared to take the BTC market risk by sweeping BTC into local currency.
Interesting to see an investment by USAA. They've really stepped up their tech game lately, partnering with some very cool companies (e.g. TrueCar), so I wonder if some type of Coinbase integration is in the works.
That's a pretty impressive lineup of investors. With that kind of funding, I imagine that Coinbase isn't just setting themselves up as a Bitcoin company, but they should be able to create infrastructure that processes/handles any sort of cryptocurrency. So even if BTC loses favor, they'll be one of the few companies that have the infrastructure to support whatever the up-and-coming cryptocurrency is. Regardless of which specific cryptocurrency is in vogue at the time, I do believe that cryptocurrencies are here to stay, and Coinbase is aiming themselves up to be the market leader. This is an investment that even I'd be willing to buy into as well, if there were ever an opportunity.
Things are so unpredictable. That's regarding the whole Bitcoin (r)evolution. I believe what's currently happening and has happened is great. All these random events that pushed its price down are giving enough time for any interested entities to acquire them at reasonable price - if they understand it and think it may be a good value storage. And it may turn out to be a really good value storage indeed.<p>Regarding Coinbase I would assume they are convincing their investors that the company has a huge value and expertise even assuming total Bitcoin collapse / switch to another digital currency.
Congrats Brian, Fred, and team! Quite an interesting funding round, and, quite a blooming market. Keep up the good work! I have to say, this sector is one of the most interesting to watch.
Maybe with this capital infusion, Coinbase will get an actual business address. Right now, their mailing address is a PO box in San Francisco's homeless district, their SSL cert is a cheap "domain control only" SSL cert, and their SEC filing gives the address of an apartment on Bluxome St.<p>That's a violation of California B&P code section 17538. (<a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=17001-18000&file=17530-17539.6" rel="nofollow">http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&gr...</a>)<p><i>(d) A vendor conducting business through the Internet or any other electronic means of communication shall do all of the following when the transaction involves a buyer located in this state:</i><p><i>(1) Before accepting any payment or processing any debit or credit charge or funds transfer, the vendor shall disclose to the buyer in writing or by electronic means of communication, such as e-mail or an on-screen notice, the vendor's return and refund policy, the legal name under which the business is conducted and, except as provided in paragraph (3), the complete street address from which the business is actually conducted.</i>
I would be really interested to have more info about Coinbase vision and plans to make bitcoin more mainstream, etc.<p>Some of those institutions are obviously signs of opening BTC to stock exchange or more hedge founds, and traditional investments assets.<p>Would have been nice to hear more of where they see/want to put bitcoin in the future.
Ben Horowitz predicted on 11/19/14 that Bitcoin is going to be one (of two) of the next massive disruptors in technology. He compares Bitcoin with the revolutionary impact of the internet.<p>It is gaining momentum.<p><a href="http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3369" rel="nofollow">http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3369</a>
Wow... Vikram Pandit is in this round. I can't think of a worst person to bring into a financial services startup. I come from the industry, and this to me, is Coinbase's Condoleezza.<p>I don't know how much everybody knows about him (I'm pretty sure his Wikipedia profile won't tell the entire story), but this finance executive has a bad reputation. Pre-financial crisis, he was COO Morgan Stanley, and later went off to create a hedge fund 100% based on hyped market bluffs. He sold the fund to Citigroup ($800m) in 2008* as a condition for him joining as interim CEO of Citigroup... and just a few months later, Citigroup wrote-off the entire fund. As per his role at Citigroup, I'll let you do the research and news digging.<p>I sometimes don't understand the tech's sector hypocrisy: tech wants to become a solution to the problem, and they go on to finance and advice themselves with the problem. I really don't get it.<p>* edit from 2007 to '08