The 50 Most Interesting Companies In Bitcoin's History: 11/50
Coinbase
The Idea: Make buying Bitcoin as easy as buying a stock. Armstrong built the initial product after going through Y Combinator ($150K seed), and Fred Ehrsam joined after seeing Armstrong's posts on Reddit.
Early Traction: Transaction volume rose 100x in 2013 from $15m at the start of the year, and further increased after the Mt. Gox failure in 2014. $5m check from Union Square Ventures, and $25m investment from A16z, USV, and Ribbit Capital in December 2013. The largest institutional capital into the industry at the time. This allowed for banking relationships with Silicon Valley Bank and brought credibility to the industry.
Peak Stats: IPO'd on April 14, 2021 via direct listing at a ~$85B valuation. Revenue peaked at $7.8B in 2021. Over 100M verified users.
Status Today: Active. Publicly traded on NASDAQ (COIN). Market cap fluctuates but has stabilized as one of the largest pure-play digital asset companies globally. Acquired Xapo's custody business ($55M, 2019), and custodies more bitcoin than any other firm globally today.
Why It Matters:
Coinbase is the definitive Bitcoin-era VC success story. It validated the entire asset class for institutional investors and became the on-ramp for tens of millions of people.