In news out yesterday, Coinbase announced it was acquiring Earn.com.
Earn.com is a paid messaging service that uses blockchain technology.
They are said to be one of the few companies that have realized a real world use case for blockchain technology thus far and been able to make money off of it.
This is significant in a space where most use cases are still in the theoretical stages.
The terms of the deal were not made public, but it is being reported that Coinbase paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million for the acquisition according to those close to the situation.
Wanting more than just the business?
The rumors are flying that Coinbase made the purchase because they had their eye on specific talent involved with the company.
Specifically, CEO Balaji Srinivasan.
Srinivasan holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and a MS in Chemical Engineering. Even more importantly than those though, he is known as the evangelist of Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.
Previously Srinivasan worked with Adreessen Horowitz and has many ties in the crypto universe.
He will immediately come on and serve as the CTO at Coinbase and he will also be responsible for bringing in new talent to the company via many of his connections.
This marks the first time Coinbase has had a CTO.
(Source: https://www.recode.net/2018/4/16/17242796/coinbase-acquisition-earn-balaji-srinivasan)
This continues the recent trend of hiring top level talent at Coinbase.
In December, Coinbase hired David Marcus, a former PayPal and Facebook executive as one of the Board of Directors.
Then, just last week, Coinbase hired Rachel Horowitz to serve as Vice President of Communications.
Previously she worked for Twitter and Facebook as well, serving as the Director of Technology Communications.
Though perhaps the hire that we are seeing have the most impact thus far is that of Emilie Choi.
She was brought on as the Vice President of Corporate and Business Development.
She previously worked at Linkedln where she oversaw a total of 40 M&A related transactions.
The acquisitions have been coming fast and furious.
Coinbase has made several acquisitions in the past few weeks alone. Though this is certainly one of their biggest to date.
Coinbase is chugging right along with their stated goal of becoming the "Google of the cryptocurrency space".
More about the recent purchase can be found here:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-acquires-earncom-and-hires-ceo-as-chief-technology-officer
Stay informed my friends.
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