The American hedge fund Tiger Global, most of whose investments are related to consumer brands, plans to invest $ 500 million in the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange.

If the negotiations are successful, the company's market value will approach $ 8 billion, which will make Coinbase one of the highest-rated startups in the United States, as well as strengthen the legitimacy of the entire cryptocurrency market. There is also information that Tiger Global plans to buy out some of the shares of Coinbase shareholders, but no specific figures have been announced yet.

The Coinbase exchange has concluded a deal with the British bank Barclays and has access to the inter-bank system Faster Payments Scheme, which makes faster transfers. This should facilitate the process of depositing and withdrawing funds for British users of the crypto exchange, because before that they had to use the services of one of the Estonian banks. Coinbase also received a license from the Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) of the United Kingdom, which allows the issuance of electronic money and provide payment services on the territory of the country. Thus, Coinbase was in fact equated with the rest of the country's financial institutions, since it will obey the same requirements and have almost the same opportunities. However, the company still has to pass several additional checks, for example, on the separation of customer funds.

In recent weeks, discussions around commissions for Bitcoin transactions and the time of their confirmation have become increasingly tense. Many community members complained about unconfirmed transactions and high cost for medium-sized transactions, which often cost more than $ 30, and a transaction with a large number of inputs can cost more than $ 50.

Such large handlers of Bitcoin payments like Coinbase, Bitpay and Shapeshift warn their users about delays. Bitpay even issued a special application and notified customers that it would no longer process payments in Bitcoins for less than $ 100 due to rapidly growing commissions. However, the next day the platform changed its decision and returned to processing payments of $ 5, but noted that it still recommends making larger payments. This was achieved by sending group transactions for small payments.

The Cryptocurrency company Coinbase announced the integration with the financial portal Yahoo Finance. Now Coinbase users will be able to view their balances in Yahoo Finance applications for iOS and Android. Perhaps it is thanks to this, as well as against the background of the rapid growth of Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in general, the application of the Coinbase cryptocurrency wallet for iOS has become the most downloaded in the American App Store, even ahead of YouTube, Facebook Messenger and Instagram in the rating of applications. Just one month ago, the application took about 400th position.

Investor and founder of crypto-currency hedge funds Mike Novogratz said that the Ethereum is ready to reach new record highs in the short term. 

This week, the dispute between the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Coinbase again worsened as the magistrate in charge of the case accepted the IRS side. Last Thursday in California, the two organizations met in court to continue litigation over the controversial case, which began almost a year ago. At recent hearings, the IRS proposal for a tax audit of Coinbase customers was discussed, which used the platform from 2013 to 2015. At the last hearing, US Justice Jacqueline Scott Corley noted that she approves the arguments put forward by the IRS, and considers the verification justified.