Coinbase Acquires Crypto Fundraising Platform Echo for $375 Million

Coinbase has acquired Echo, an onchain fundraising platform, for approximately $375 million, the crypto exchange announced Tuesday.

The deal marks another major acquisition this year for Coinbase as it expands its role in early-stage crypto funding.

“We want to create more accessible, efficient, and transparent capital markets,” the company said in a statement. “But today, founders often struggle to raise capital and individual investors don’t have the opportunity to invest in private token sales.

Echo, founded by crypto podcaster Cobie, “a crypto OG and long-time advocate for community-driven investing,” allows projects to raise directly from their community through private sales or by self-hosting public token sales using Sonar, its flagship product.

Projects have used the platform to raise more than $200 million across roughly 300 completed deals since launch. And Echo’s Sonar product has already seen early success, including powering Plasma’s XPL token sale, the statement notes.

“Onchain capital formation is a vital and unique part of the crypto ecosystem,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted following the announcement. “Excited to be adding Echo and Sonar to Coinbase to give our customers new token access opportunities.”

By integrating Echo’s tools, Coinbase seeks to enable more direct community participation in fundraising by doing it entirely onchain.

While Coinbase will start with crypto token sales via Sonar, the company plans to expand support to tokenized securities and real-world assets over time, leveraging Echo’s infrastructure, the company said.

The acquisition pairs Echo’s fundraising tools with token management platform LiquiFi, which Coinbase acquired in July to handle token creation and cap table management, covering crypto projects from launch through capital raising.

The deal continues Coinbase’s aggressive expansion throughout this year, starting with Spindl, an onchain advertising startup, in January.

In March, it brought in the Iron Fish team to build privacy features for its Base network. In May, Coinbase agreed to acquire derivatives exchange Deribit for roughly $2.9 billion, with the deal reportedly closing in August.

This month alone, Coinbase invested in Indian exchange CoinDCX at a $2.45 billion valuation and entered advanced talks to acquire U.K. stablecoin firm BVNK for up to $2.5 billion, according to a Fortune report.

On Monday, Coinbase paid $25 million to acquire and burn an NFT tied to the UpOnly podcast that Cobie co-hosted during the previous bull market.

Coinbase’s shares rose roughly 2.3% on Tuesday, changing hands at around $343.78 per share, according to Yahoo Finance.