Coinbase to Acquire Israeli Firm Unbound Security

Coinbase has announced plans to purchase Israeli cyber-security firm Unbound Security. The cryptocurrency exchange announced on Tuesday that it was in the process of acquiring the Tel Aviv company but did not disclose the price of the deal. It is also unclear when the deal will be finalized, but it will be ‘in the coming months’.

Despite having invested in top security methods in the past, Coinbase recently became a target of an intricate phishing scam that involved the use of SIM cards and affected over 6000 users. This new acquisition gives the crypto exchange an added layer of security against cyber attacks. Unbound Security uses a form of cryptographic security known as Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology which is said to be highly secure and user-friendly.

“MPC will deliver … by protecting our customers’ assets with a technique that provides the virtually impenetrable nature of cold, offline storage, with the frictionless convenience of hot, online wallets,” the company wrote.

Aside from the added security with the Unbound acquisition, Coinbase also gains a foothold in one of the world’s top tech hubs. The deal enables Coinbase to establish a research facility in Isreal. The facility will be headed by members of Unbound’s team.

“In addition to the technological expertise that we will gain through this acquisition, we also plan to establish a tech center of excellence in Israel that will ensure that Coinbase is always at the bleeding edge of security and blockchain technology. We’ve long recognized Israel as a hotbed of strong technology and cryptography talent, and are excited to continue to grow our team with some of the best and brightest minds in these fields. The Unbound Security team will form the nucleus of this new research facility, which we plan to grow over time,” the blog post read in part.

Following its public listing in April, Counbase has gone on to make some strategic purchases. Some top firms to make deals with Coinbase include the AI-enabled support platform Agara AI which was purchased for more than $40 million to help improve the crypto exchange’s customer service, Dallas-based crypto data aggregator Zabo, infrastructure provider Bison Trails and data analytics platform Skew. Last week crypto wallet provider BRD also announced that Coinbase had purchased the company and some of the BRD team would be moving to Coinbase where they would continue to work on crypto wallets. So far this year, Coinbase has bought more than 13 firms.

The crypto exchange, which generates most of its revenue from retail trading announced in August that it was prepared in case winter was slow for crypto. Anticipating the possibility of reduced retail trading volumes, the company set aside about $4 billion. It ended Q3 ‘21 with $1.2 billion in revenue of which $406 million was profit.