What happens when you’re facilitating the trade of a product that is experiencing extreme hockey stick growth? You expand your team and operations as quickly as possible.

This is what Coinbase, an exchange platform for bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin, is experiencing. The California-based company will have plenty of war stories to tell once this season mellows out. After bitcoin blew past $16,000 earlier today*, the company tweeted:

The New York Times, in its piece Coinbase: the Heart of Bitcoin Frenzy, explained Coinbase’s popularity over other cryptocurrency trading platforms. Author Nathaniel Popper said, “Coinbase has been the dominant place that ordinary Americans go to buy and sell virtual currency. No company had made it simpler to sign up, link a bank account or debit card, and begin buying Bitcoin.”

Because of this growth, Coinbase now has more customers than E-Trade and Charles Schwab, having increased by 7.8 million accounts since January of this year. However, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sees past the hype into a more stable future for cryptocurrency. He told the New York Times that bitcoin is “probably a little bit too focused on the price or people trying to make money.” He added, “The thing I’m passionate about with digital currency is the world having an open financial system.”

Coinbase isn’t the only one experiencing growing pains. Global banking company Revolut, which launched a cryptocurrency trading feature today, sent out this series of Tweets this morning:

Founded in 2012, Coinbase demoed Instant Exchange at FinovateSpring 2014. In August, the company became a fintech unicorn after it closed a $100 million round of Series D funding. At that point, Pitchbook estimated Coinbase’s value to be $1.6 billion.

*Note: Earlier today Bitcoin’s value spiked over $17,300 but at press time sits at $17,099.

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has a new president, Asiff Hirji, who will also serve in the newly-created position of chief operating officer. Formerly of Hewlett-Packard and Andreessen Horowitz, Hirji joins the company at a time of soaring interest in bitcoin and digital currencies, and will bring his expertise in managing large investment platforms and brokerage firms to Coinbase at a key moment in the company’s growth.

Writing at The Coinbase Blog this morning, co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said, “Coinbase is moving into an exciting phase of our journey. Asiff’s knowledge of traditional financial services, as well as his deep technical expertise, makes him the perfect person to guide our operations as we grow into new markets and products.”

“Asiff is an elite operator, with fantastic domain expertise from Ameritrade, and a deep technical background,” Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Ben Horowitz said, calling Coinbase’s new executive “the perfect fit.”

In addition to his experience with Hewlett-Packard and Andreessen Horowitz, Asiff Hirji (pictured) has served as a senior advisor at Bain Capital, founded private investment and operating company Inflekxion, and is a director at number of technology firms including Eze Software Group, TES Global Limited, RentPath, and Saxo Bank. With a BSc in Computer Science from University of Calgary, he earned an MBA from the Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

“Coinbase is uniquely positioned like no other company to capitalize on the burgeoning crypto-economy,” Hirji said. “Its breadth of offerings, global footprint, and unique capabilities mean that it will continue to be the first place that retail and institutional investors look when they invest in cryptocurrencies.”

As such, Hirji told The Wall Street Journal that the challenge for Coinbase will “definitely” be growth. He said that both finding engineers that are well-versed in cryptocurrency technologies and dealing effectively the “patchwork of regulations around bitcoin” have been among the challenges to bitcoin businesses that “have yet to be resolved.”

With more than 10 million customers served, and more than $50 billion in digital currency exchanged, Coinbase demonstrated its Instant Exchange technology at FinovateSpring 2014. Earlier this month, the company introduced Coinbase Custody, a new solution to help institutional investors securely store digital assets. In August, Coinbase closed a $100 million Series D funding round led by IVP that took the company’s total capital to $217 million and an estimated valuation of $1.6 billion.

Who knows how much more appreciation in the price of bitcoin will be required to encourage notorious crypto-currency skeptic and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to endorse investing in digital assets. But when he does, a new company launched by Coinbase called Coinbase Custody will be there to make sure he does it the right way.

“By some estimates there is $10B of institutional money waiting on the sidelines to invest in digital currency today,” Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong wrote in a blog post this month. He highlighted the number of hedge funds that have been set up solely to trade and invest in bitcoin and other digital assets, as well as the growing number of family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and others examining ways to add digital currencies to their portfolios. He also noted that the primary obstacle to broader investment in these assets is the ability to store client’s digital assets safely.

With Coinbase Custody, Armstrong has set out to meet a set of factors – ranging from strict financial controls with audit trails to multi-user accounts and exceptional cyber and physical security – he believes FIs require in order to trust a digital asset custodian. He pointed out that because Coinbase “already store(s) billions of dollars worth of digital assets” for its customers – and currently serves “thousands of institutions” on its U.S. digital currency exchange, GDAX – Coinbase is an ideal partner for FIs looking to securely store digital assets. “Our goal with Coinbase Custody is to help dramatically accelerate the flow of institutional money into digital currencies over the coming years,” Armstrong wrote.

Institutions that sign up for Coinbase Custodian will get access to an early version of the solution to be released in 2018. The product is exclusively for institutional investors with a minimum of $10 million in deposits. Coinbase presently charges an initial set-up fee of $100,000 plus a fee of 10 basis points per month on assets stored.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Coinbase demonstrated its Instant Exchange platform at FinovateSpring 2014. In August, the company closed a $100 million Series D round led by IVP, which took Coinbase’s total funding to $217 million and a valuation of $1.6 billion. Named to KPMG/H2 Ventures Fintech 100 for 2017’s Leading 50, Coinbase introduced its Instant Purchases option in October, which enables users to buy digital assets directly using a U.S. bank account.

Digital currency wallet Coinbase has taken the leap to become a unicorn today. The San Francisco-based company announced it has received $100 million in Series D funding led by IVP. Other investors include Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32, and Draper Associates.

Today’s investment brings the company’s total funding to $217 million; Pitchbook estimates Coinbase is now valued at $1.6 billion. This makes the company one of only a handful of unicorns (startups with more than $1 billion valuations) in fintech and crowns Coinbase as the first bitcoin unicorn.

Since it was founded in 2012, Coinbase has now exchanged more than $25 billion worth of digital currency for its clients. Almost $15 billion of this occurred in the first half of 2017 alone. The company plans to put the new funds to work in three ways. First, Coinbase plans to expand its engineering and customer support teams. Second, it will open a GDAX office in New York City to better position itself to serve professional traders. Third, it will invest in the digital currency Toshi to build it into a global payments network.

Coinbase, which supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin in 32 countries, offers three main products:

• Coinbase: an exchange platform for digital currency
• GDAX: exchange platform for professional U.S. traders and institutions
• Toshi: a browser for the Ethereum network

The company notes that with this funding, it is preparing to transition into phase three of its “secret master plan,” that is, it plans to build a consumer interface for decentralized digital currency apps. Coinbase, which demoed Instant Exchange at FinovateSpring 2014, has made headlines twice today– the first instance highlighting its View Balance feature in partnership with Fidelity Labs.

The innovation division of Fidelity Investments, Fidelity Labs, and digital asset exchange Coinbase released a new balance viewing feature for investors this week. The move may be a small step for Fidelity brokerage clients who want to see their digital currency assets alongside their other investments. But it is an interesting sign from a company that helped drive mass adoption of and investment in another revolutionary asset class – mutual funds – more than two decades ago.

As Project Manager Kristen Stone noted at the Coinbase blog, the view balance feature was tested on Fidelity employees with digital currency accounts at Coinbase earlier this year. The popularity of the feature led Fidelity to expand the offering to all its customers, which Stone called a testament “to the continued commitment of traditional financial institutions to adopt digital assets and widen access for customers.”

Linking Coinbase accounts to Fidelity is straightforward. Select Add Non-Fidelity Accounts from the All Accounts dashboard. A pop-up enables users to choose between accounts to be added, with the Coinbase option featured. The user will then be taken to their Coinbase account where they can authorize access and complete the account linking process.

This partnership is a small example of how Fidelity has begun to embrace digital assets. Writing for The Street.com, Brian O’Connell and Ross Kenneth Urken noted that the company allows Bitcoin transactions in its corporate cafeteria, and Fidelity employees can donate in Bitcoin to the company’s Charitable Donor Advised Fund. The authors suggested that having a $6 trillion AUM investment company take interest in digital currencies adds a measure of validation for the assets, which are still in infancy.

“Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies are emerging from their infancy but mass adoption is still many years away,” Fidelity Labs Managing Director and SVP Hadley Stern said. At the same time, Stern warned against underestimating the attraction of digital assets and the underlying technology. “Just as many other technologies have done in the past, Bitcoin and blockchain will transform how we manage our finances.”

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Coinbase demonstrated its Instant Exchange at FinovateSpring 2014. A member of CB Insights Fintech 250, Coinbase announced a pilot integration with Western Union in June and added support for Litecoin in May. Coinbase launched its open source, combination messaging app and ethereum wallet, Token, in April. The company has raised more than $112 million in funding, and includes Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), and Bank of Tokyo – Mitsubishi among its investors. Brian Armstrong is co-founder and CEO.