Coinbase Taking ERC20 Business Seriously, Acquires Cipher Browser

After announcing the ERC20 tokens support, Coinbase has made a move in that direction by acquiring its small competitor Cipher Browser. Similar to Coinbase’s Toshi, Cipher Browser is a mobile ethereum wallet and a Dapp browser whose team will combine with that of Toshi’s after the acquisition.

Coinbase buys its competitor cipher browser for Ethereum wallet

One of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase has acquired the Cipher Browser, in order to boost its ethereum wallet and decentralized mobile browser. At the end of last month, Coinbase announced that it will be adding ERC20 tokens support and with Cipher Browser acquisition, Coinbase is certainly taking its ERC20 business seriously. However, the terms of the deal have not been made public.

Cipher Browser is basically “the world’s first full-featured mobile dapp browser and wallet for the Ethereum blockchain.” It allows you to interact with dapps that are powered by ethereum on your mobile phones. Furthermore, Cipher enables its users to send, receive and store the ERC20 and Ether tokens.

Coinbase already has Toshi, which is a similar product i.e. an ethereum browser and now with this deal, the bitcoin exchange plans to merge the team of Toshi and Cipher Browser. The founder of Cipher Browser, Peter Kim will be appointed as the head of engineering at Toshi, who will be working alongside Sid Coelho-Prabhu, the product lead for Toshi.

With this deal, Toshi will bring its Testnets feature into the play that provides the developers with the ability to experiment with their apps but without actually using the real cryptocurrency.

Also, read: Yahoo Japan To Officially Buy 40% Stake In Japanese Crypto Exchange, BitARG

Google of cryptocurrency? Coinbase launches venture fund & hires big shots

Recently, Coinbase hired Emilie Choi, the head of mergers and acquisitions in LinkedIn among many other big names. With the exchange’s latest $100 million funding for series D and the revenue stream of $1 billion, the company has a lot of funds to invest in acquisitions.

A few days back, Coinbase launched Coinbase Ventures, an incubator fund that is to give a boost to the cryptocurrency startups and its founders. The venture fund already has $15 million which is expected to grow.

The company also stated in a blog post:

“You may also see us invest in companies that ostensibly look competitive with Coinbase. There may be a nuance to the way these startups are building out their products. Or, in some cases, we may be comfortable investing in companies that are potentially competitive, because it’s in everyone’s interest to see the ecosystem innovate.”

In January, the exchange also acquired the engineering team of Memo.AI which is a startup that built a slackbot for managing the technical teams.

By acquiring its small competitor, Coinbase has pulled a similar move as Google and is all set to become the Google of the cryptocurrency world.

Do you think Coinbase will be able to dominate the cryptocurrency sector?