Coinbase, of late, has made quite a few acquisitions when it comes to firms working in the blockchain and crypto ecosystems. The company’s latest acquisition is that of Neutrino, a blockchain intelligence startup based in Italy. While the financial details of this deal have not been made public, the deal is sealed. Coinbase officially welcomed Neutrino to its platform via a blog post.
One of the key things that Neutrino does, which is likely what attracted Coinbase, is that the company maps blockchain networks and pulls information and insights about cryptocurrency transactions. A major benefit of such a technology would be that it would ensure that it becomes easy to track digital assets in case they get stolen or hacked. Commenting on the importance of Blockchain Intelligence, Varun Srinivasan, Coinbase’s engineering director said:
Blockchain intelligence is increasingly important in the crypto ecosystem, and is necessary to achieve our mission of bringing the open financial system to the world.
Moreover, another major service that Neutrino’s blockchain intelligence provides is that it identifies the trends and pinpoints which cryptocurrencies are performing better based on different factors. This would be beneficial for those involved in the investment and finance sectors. Moreover, as Coinbase focuses towards listing security token offerings, having this startup’s technology is going to be quite beneficial for the company.
Currently based out of Italy, Neutrino has eight employees. The entire Neutrino team will now be moving to London, where they would work out of Coinbase’s office. Neutrino’s primary function would be to prevent theft of funds and to look into ransomware attacks. Both of the analysis reports would help the firm identify the bad actors in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The Coinbase blog post reads:
By analyzing data on public blockchains, Neutrino will help us prevent theft of funds from peoples’ accounts, investigate ransomware attacks, and identify bad actors. It will also help us bring more cryptocurrencies and features to more people while helping ensure compliance with local laws and regulations.
11th Acquisition for Coinbase
Coinbase has quite a history of acquisitions. The company has acquired a number of firms working in the cryptocurrency and blockchain domains. This includes the likes of Earn.com, which they acquired last year - and Blockspring, acquired by the company in January 2019. Sometimes, Coinbase makes these acquisitions to get the technology. However, in some cases such as Earn, the primary motive is to get the team on board. Balaji Srinivasan, the Earn.com co-founder, is now the CTO at Coinbase.
Coinbase is looking forward to expanding and adding more coins as their offerings. As of this writing, Coinbase offers support for 18 cryptocurrencies at the moment - however, that number might change depending upon the country or the region of the user. Nevertheless, Coinbase wants to add even more cryptocurrencies on their platform. One of the key names that Coinbase is considering adding is that of Ripple (XRP). Stay tuned with us for more updates from the world of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology!