Coinbase (COIN) has acquired Echo, a startup focused on on-chain capital formation, for approximately $375 million.
Founded by a longtime crypto figure known by the pseudonym Cobie, Echo has helped projects raise more than $200 million in nearly 300 deals since its launch.
The platform allows startups to raise funding directly from the community, either privately using a product called Sonar, or through self-hosted public token sales.
In a statement announcing the acquisition, Coinbase said the deal will help it build a “full stack” solution for crypto financing. For startups, this means easier access to capital and tools to tailor funding to their user base. For investors, this opens the door to early-stage opportunities that have often been gated behind private networks.
“Echo will remain a standalone platform under its current branding for now, but we will integrate Sonar’s public sale product into Coinbase and likely introduce new ways for founders to access investors, and new ways for investors to access opportunities on Coinbase itself,” Covey said on X.
Coinbase plans to expand Echo’s infrastructure beyond cryptocurrencies and eventually support tokenized securities and real-world assets, the company said.
This acquisition complements Coinbase’s previous acquisition of token management platform LiquiFi. The exchange’s move also comes after it spent $25 million to revive Cobie’s UpOnly podcast.