Coinbase's $375M Echo Acquisition: Revolutionizing Onchain Fundraising for Crypto Projects

Coinbase Acquires Echo to Transform Capital Formation

Coinbase has acquired Echo, the leading onchain capital raising platform, for approximately $375 million. This strategic move aims to make it easier for companies to raise funds and grow, while giving the community early access to unique investment opportunities.

Echo is an onchain platform that helps communities invest together and provides founders with more options for their cap table. Like Coinbase, Echo believes in democratizing early-stage investing, enabling more people to support the next generation of breakthrough companies. Founded by Cobie, a crypto OG and long-time advocate for community-driven investing, Echo has pioneered tools that make fundraising more inclusive, transparent, and efficient.

The motivation behind this acquisition is clear: to create more accessible, efficient, and transparent capital markets. Currently, founders often struggle to raise capital, and individual investors lack opportunities to invest in private token sales.

Echo addresses these challenges by allowing projects to raise funds directly from their community through private sales or self-hosted public token sales using Sonar. Integrating Echo's tools will enhance direct community participation, connecting projects with capital entirely onchain. Initially, the focus will be on crypto token sales via Sonar, with plans to expand support to tokenized securities and real-world assets over time, leveraging Echo's infrastructure.

Echo has already made significant progress in opening up private markets, helping projects raise over $200 million across approximately 300 completed deals since its launch. Its self-hosted public token sale product, Sonar, has shown early success, notably powering Plasma's XPL token sale.

With this acquisition, Coinbase is building a full-stack solution for crypto projects and investors, covering everything from launch to fundraising to secondary trading.

Key Benefits:

• For builders: Easier access to capital and community-aligned fundraising tools like Echo for private investment groups and Sonar for self-hosted public token sales.
• For investors: New, differentiated opportunities that were previously out of reach, either through a trusted platform like Echo or through direct offerings with Sonar.
• For the onchain economy: A more efficient, transparent, and globally accessible capital market that drives innovation and growth.

Echo complements Coinbase's recent acquisition of Liquifi, which streamlines token creation and cap table management for early-stage teams. While Liquifi strengthened support for builders at the start of their journey, Echo extends that support into fundraising. Combined with Coinbase's existing strengths in exchange listings, custody, staking, trading, and financing, the company is now equipped to support token issuers and investors across the full lifecycle – from launch to fundraising to secondary markets.

Coinbase is already a trusted platform where users, liquidity, and trust converge. Expanding into fundraising removes friction, empowering builders and investors and enabling the ecosystem to grow.