The demand towards the bitcoin industry is increasing at a rapid rate. Major institutional and billionaire investors are entering the bitcoin sector to fund leading startups such as Coinbase and Blockchain.
On June 22, CCN reported that Blockchain raised a $40 million funding round from Google’s venture capital firm, Lakestar and billionaire investor Richard Branson. In an interview with CNBC, Blockchain CEO Peter Smith stated that the multi-million dollar funding round will be allocated in the development and scaling of the Blockchain wallet platform that is utilized by nearly 15 million users.
According Blockchain data, the wallet platform has added over 7 million users in the past year, recording more users than it did within a 7-year period from 2009 to 2016.
To address its rapidly increasing user base and the explosive growth of the bitcoin industry, Blockchain secured $40 million from leading investors. Smith emphasized that scaling is crucial for the platform as gross revenue forecast for the company is expected to be more than 100 percent year-over-year in June.“We are really focused on scaling to meet the record demand we are getting in the market. We started raising this round before the run up in the crypto market. It was good timing in the end because while we were closing the round, we were massively up on every level. Our traffic has been growing 15 percent week over week in last two weeks,” said Smith.
In an official blog post, Smith and the rest of the Blockchain development team revealed that the firm will roll out newly developed innovative technologies that will allow customers to “transact, save, or hedge digital assets with greater speed, efficiency and control.” A large part of its long-term strategy is to expand globally to provide fair, open and transparent financial services to everyone across the globe.
In regards to the $40 million funding round, Smith noted:
“Our Series B represents the most substantial investment in the fintech space since Brexit and is the largest Series B raised by any digital currency company to date. This brings our total capital raised to over $70 million and we’re thrilled to welcome some of the most well-respected investors in the world to the Blockchain family.”
To this date, Blockchain remains as the largest bitcoin wallet service provider in the world, with nearly 15 million users. Coinbase, which was once valued at one tenth of the market cap of bitcoin, is the second largest wallet and trading platform in the market, with more than 8.1 million users.
Coinbase also operates a digital asset exchange called GDAX, which within a period of two years has transformed into a leading trading platform for institutional investors and professional traders. As interests from investors fueled into the cryptocurrency and bitcoin sectors, Coinbase is eyeing a $100 million funding round at a $1 billion valuation.
Although Blockchain’s valuation hasn’t been made public as of yet, if the $100 million investment is secured, Coinbase will become the only billion dollar startup within the cryptocurrency sector.
On June 2, the Wall Street Journal and other source such as CNBC reported that Coinbase is set to secure a $116.5 million funding round from prominent investment firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and DFJ at $1 billion valuation.
As the market cap of bitcoin and the demand towards the digital currency as digital gold, safe haven asset and settlement networks increase, an increasing number of investors will gear towards the bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency markets and allocate more resources into both early-stage and large-scale companies.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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