In the summer of 2011, in the cafeteria at Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York, two young men in suits and leather shoes were talking.
One, the youngest, listened with respect and nodded frequently. The other man, white with brown hair and blue eyes, spoke non-stop.
Looking at the Goldman Sachs elites, these are two looked like ordinary businessmen. However, they could not even predict that, in a few years, the company they envisioned would make them millionaires in the cryptocurrency business.
Ten years after that meeting, more precisely at 9:30 am on April 14, 2021, Coinbase, the largest US exchange, was officially listed on the Nasdaq exchange.
Created by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, the exchange this week achieved a feat that is being considered a milestone in the history of cryptocurrencies.
Coinbase History
According to Armstrong, to create the company, he signed up for the startup incubator program Y Combinator. Then, he received US $ 150 thousand to develop the project.
Thus, in October 2012, the company launched the Bitcoin trading service by bank transfer.
After launching in May 2013, the company received a $ 5 million Series A investment. The round was led by Fred Wilson of venture capital firm Union Square Ventures.
In December of the same year, the company received a new contribution of US $ 25 million, from the venture capital companies Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures (USV) and Ribbit Capital.
Since then, investments have not stopped.
In January 2015, the company raised $ 75 million in investments. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the New York Stock Exchange, USAA and several banks, led the round.
In May 2016, the company changed its name from Coinbase Exchange to Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX). Today, it is one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world.
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