UPDATED 13:33 EDT / DECEMBER 12 2013

Coinbase secures $25M in funding : Proves quality Bitcoin services rule the market

Coinbase is proving the Bitcoin is here for the long haul.  The cloud-based Bitcoin service raised a $25 million Series B funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors Union Square Ventures and Ribbit Capital.  With this round of funding, two new members will join Coinbase’s board, Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon and Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson.

“The designers of the Web built placeholders for a system that moved money, but never successfully completed it. Bitcoin is the first plausible proposal for an economic protocol for the Internet,” Dixon stated.

Aside from Dixon and Wilson, Gavin Andresen, the head developer of Bitcoin, joins Coinbase as an advisor.

“Coinbase has become a critical piece of the Bitcoin infrastructure in the U.S., giving people a trustworthy and easy way to buy, sell, trade and store bitcoins. The best part of my job as Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation is interacting with the brilliant people at Coinbase and other startups all over the world who are working hard to make Bitcoin accessible to everybody,” Andresen stated.

This round of funding makes Coinbase the highest funded Bitcoin service to date, bringing its total to $31 million.

What makes Coinbase different from other Bitcoin services is that it delivers the total package.  It is a service beneficial for consumers, merchants, and developers, allowing the cryptocurrency community to flourish.

Coinbase now has more than 600,000 consumer Bitcoin wallets, with 10,000 new customers signing up every day.  With more than 16,000 merchants such as OkCupid, Khan Academy and Reddit using the service, Coinbase is easily dominating the industry.

Back in May, SiliconANGLE Founding Editor Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins talked about exposing white spaces in Bitcoin markets and mentioned that any company that can do anything in the BTC space but come at it with a degree of professionalism will gobble up market share, and he believes that Coinbase is doing a good job of getting ahead of the competition.

“They’ve been dotting I’s and crossing T’s, to ensure they’re one of the first fully legitimized and bulletproof BTC-based payment processors, and it shows,” Hopkins stated. See his entire commentary in the video below.

photo credit: zennie62 via photopin cc

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