Demand for Bitcoin has once again gone up

with the price of the digital currency continuing to hit all-time highs. Cryptocurrency exchange company Coinbase has been growing strong along with this demand in order to make more improvements and gain more transactions on their end. Coinbase has recently been in discussions with potential investors, according to Reuters. The company is looking to raise a total of $1 bln for their next funding. While Coinbase, according to its blog, has grown four times since January 2017, its co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong is looking to expand and cater beyond Bitcoin.

The growing demand comes from the increase in new cryptocurrency exchange startups that utilize the technology, such as Coinbase. With these new companies and ICOs, many investors, including the smaller ones, are flocking toward this new digital investment medium. Coinbase stated that it was already able to raise a total of $75 mln from the financial sector through entities like the New York Stock Exchange and several banks. However, they are still targeting more funds for the improvement of their services. Recently, Coinbase has also received a transmitter license from the New York Department of Financial Services.

Beyond Bitcoins

In line with the company’s mission to create an open financial system for the world, Brian Armstrong tells about their plans of going

beyond Bitcoin.

“It’s incredibly difficult to predict the future and the digital currency industry is no exception (take the above for what it is, pure speculation). Rapid change seems to be the only certainty.”

With the growth of the cryptocurrency market, Coinbase aims to make themselves one of the leaders not only within the Bitcoin industry but also to be the leading exchange company for all cryptocurrencies. “For this reason, you’ll see Coinbase and GDAX continue to support more cryptocurrencies in 2017. As the most popular retail exchange (Coinbase) and institutional exchange in the US (GDAX), we want to make it easy for people to use all types of digital currencies,” Armstrong continued.

Improved service and security

As part of the growing demands for its service, Coinbase is looking to hire 10 new contractors for their house team over the next three months, according to Armstrong. The company also aims to combat inevitable growing pains and security risks. For example, Cody Brown, founder of IRL, shared a recent security issue which wiped out over $8,000 worth of his Bitcoins. As part of their planned expansion, Coinbase aims to put in place “several account security improvements are rolling out, including improvements to our two factor authentication, and a new system to flag risky withdrawals,” Armstrong highlighted.