Digital Currency Exchange Coinbase Buys Earn.com

US-based digital currency exchange Coinbase said on Monday it acquired Earn.com, and as part of the agreement, Earn's Chief Executive Balaji Srinivasan would join the company as chief technology officer.

Earn, also headquartered in the United States, allows senders to pay users in cryptocurrency to reply to emails and complete tasks. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed in a blog post by Coinbase, but tech publication Recode reported that the transaction was worth slightly more than $100 million (roughly Rs. 656 crores).

Formerly known as 21, Earn.com started out as a bitcoin mining startup, but eventually became a cryptocurrency-based professional networking platform that allows users to earn bitcoin by answering emails and completing other tasks.

Srinivasan was formerly a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The Earn.com deal follows Coinbase's acquisition last week of Cipher Browser, a mobile decentralized application browser and wallet.

Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency company in the world and was most recently valued at $1.6 billion (roughly Rs. 6,500 crores), according to PitchBook.

© Thomson Reuters 2018