Coinbase launches in 14 countries including Finland

    Editor’s note: This article incorrectly listed Sweden as a country Coinbase is launching in.

    As last weeks news of an eight figure investment into KnC miner heated up bitcoin news in the region, we’ve heard today that Coinbase has launched in Finland as part of their European rollout into 13 countries.

    In the Nordics there have been a few contenders for the space Coinbase fills in U.S., such as Safello in Stockholm or Coinmotion in Helsinki. Now with an international band know to be reliable to bitcoin buyers and merchants, these platforms face strong competition.

    Coinbase has been successful in getting companies like Dell, Expedia, and others to start accepting bitcoins, and perhaps these local platforms’ adoption requires a similar strategy to European brands.

    Typically we don’t cover these international rollouts but Coinbase has a little bit of the Nordics in it now with the acquisition of Karri Saarinen and Jori Lallo, the cofounders of YCombinator-backed Kippt and workplace communication tool INC, who joined the Coinbase team in May (which we didn’t get a chance to cover).

    Saarinen and Lallo have a deep history with the Coinbase team, getting to know each other though the same YCombinator batch.

    On their “Next Chapter” blog post, they wrote:

    We believe that Bitcoin is one of the most important inventions of the past decade and it’s driving a major shift in the payments and financial industry. For the first time, designers and developers like us can now re-imagine the way financial transactions and products are designed and built. Coinbase is at the heart of this revolution and shares our passion to build beautiful and easy to use products. We could not be more excited about joining Coinbase’s product team and look forward to an epic adventure!

    For full disclosure, Saarinen was an original co-founder of ArcticStartup.