According to Coinbase, other investors that participated in the funding round were Andreessen Horowitz, Wellington Management, and Tiger Global Management. The exchange did not reveal how much GIC invested in the fundraising.
GIC and Mizuho, a large financial institution based in Japan with ties to the crypto sector made a joint equity investment of approximately $265 million in the Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) in January of 2019.
GIC Wants No Involvement with The Crypto Space
The sovereign fund has been making many investments in technology, but so far it has stayed clear of getting involved in cryptocurrency.
GIC has invested funds into technology startups and growth companies, though occasionally it has used external fund managers.
The GIC fund owns over $100 billion worth of assets in over 40 countries. However, it appears that Bitcoin and other altcoins are not in the fund’s plans.
Jeffrey Jaensubhakij, chief investment officer of GIC, explained that virtual assets are not of interest to them because they are not government-supported and lack backing from other real-world assets.
Jaensubhakij said at a briefing in July last year:
“Cryptocurrencies are not issued by any government and are not backed by any asset or issuer. There is no regulatory safeguard for investments in cryptocurrencies. We consider the surges and changes in prices of cryptocurrencies to be driven by speculation.”
The funding round held in October by Coinbase has made it into one of the most valuable crypto firms on the market, garnering an estimated value of $8 billion.
The most impressive aspect is that the exchange succeeded in raising so much money in spite of the fact that the crypto market was going through a bear period.