Los Angeles: Coinbase Inc., the digital currency exchange that in the past two months suffered a trading crash and upset customers over how it handled the bitcoin split, received a $100m investment from a group led by IVP.
Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32 and Draper Associates also participated, according to a statement Thursday. Coinbase plans to use the money to expand its engineering and customer support staff, open a New York office for its professional trading platform GDAX and grow Toshi, “a mobile browser for the ethereum network that provides universal access to financial services,” said Megan Hernbroth, a spokeswoman.
Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based Coinbase said it has seen “unprecedented growth” over the last year as it helped customers buy and sell more than $25 billion worth of digital currencies such as bitcoin and ether. Cryptocurrencies have seen enormous price gains -- bitcoin is up 250 percent year to date -- trouncing other asset classes amid an explosion of attention, but there are growing pains.
