Coinbase raises $75 million in funding round – investors includes New York Stock Exchange, Japanese telcom giant DoCoMo and Spanish megabank BBVA

Founded in June 2012, Coinbase is the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet with more than two million wallet users and almost 40.000 merchants acquiring network. The $75m figure is by far the largest ever raised by a bitcoin company, doubling the $30.5m raised by bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain and equaling roughly 23% of the public capital raised by the entire digital currency industry in 2014, according to coindesk.com.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sought to frame the funding as one that will help shift the mainstream perception of bitcoin during what has so far proven a rocky year for the industry. Armstrong told CoinDesk: ”I think this just really changes the conversation. There’s smart money out there that is betting big on this and is totally unphased by the whims of the price and what the market is doing. They’re much more concerned about the fundamentals of what’s happening in the network … and across those metrics, everything is looking great.”

He went on to explain that all the participants in the round are excited about innovations in the bitcoin space, and that they want to leverage their investment in Coinbase to learn more about what might lie ahead.

Coinbase intends to use its new capital to grow its employee base, while focusing on improving its mobile product as it eyes entry into developing markets. “We want to expand responsibly,” Armstrong said. “We’re in 19 countries now and our goal is to be in 30 by the end of 2015.”

Armstrong believes that Coinbase will find market share outside the developing world, even if that will be in ways perhaps not expected by early adopters. “Bitcoin will take off in areas that are underserved by traditional payment systems right now, areas where people’s next alternative is dramatically worse,” he said, citing microtransactions, cross-border payments and peer-to-peer lending as examples of verticals he believes will be profoundly impacted by bitcoin.

Armstrong, however, asserted that while the mainstream market may not see the big picture of this latest funding round, they will over time. “Smart money often makes contrarian bets,” he concluded. “That’s how they win big.”

To date, the California-based company has raised $106m.