Coinbase is acquiring the team behind Utopia, a stablecoin and payments startup that pivoted away from its core product last year/
The Utopia Labs team will focus on building stablecoin-based payments directly into the Coinbase Wallet, with cross-border likely to be part of the product.
Four members from the team are joining Coinbase, namely Kaito Cunningham, Alexander Wu, Jason Chong, and Anthony Tat.
Utopia, which last raised $23 million from investors including Paradigm and Coinbase, is expected to wind down its company and product following the sale.
Last year, it pivoted away from its focus on crypto SMBs to hone in on stablecoin payments.
Coinbase has been historically acquisitive, and Aggarwal see opportunities to make further, similar acquisitions to grow Base.
“There’s opportunities to acquire different developer tools and teams and integrate them similarly into Base,” he says.
“The user experiences that we’re focused on are payments, creators, and social.”
