Looking to transform the cryptocurrency ecosystem, popular bitcoin wallet and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Inc. announced Thursday the formation of a new early-stage financing project.

Coinbase Ventures will become a way to provide funds to early-stage companies and startups in the cryptocurrency and digital ledger blockchain industry. In the beginning, Coinbase aims to help the most compelling companies in the industry to flourish, said Emilie Choi, head of corporate and business development operations at Coinbase, who joined in March after heading mergers and acquistions at LinkedIn.

“We’ll be providing financing to promising early-stage companies that have the teams and ideas that can move the space forward in a positive, meaningful way,” Choi said in a blog post announcing the venture.

These investments would be spread across the industry and that could lead Coinbase to invest in companies that appear to be competitors. Choi said that that’s because Coinbase will be looking for industry leaders that are building out products in ways that will affect the ecosystem long-term.

“Because it’s in everyone’s interest to see the ecosystem innovate, we’re taking a long-term view of the space,” she said, “and we believe that multiple approaches are healthy and good.”

Aside from funding projects in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry at large, Coinbase would also invest in projects started by the company’s own employees and former employees.

Coinbase is a force to be reckoned with in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry. The company reportedly pulled in more than $1 billion in revenue during 2017. The same year, investments in the company also exceeded $1.6 billion in valuation, making the company the first bitcoin “unicorn,” a startup with a paper valuation in excess of $1 billion.

As of November, Coinbase had more than 13.3 million users and facilitated more than $50 billion in cryptocurrency trades through its virtual wallet and exchange, which supports bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

As Coinbase prepares to expand the horizons of the cryptocurrency industry, the company is also in talks to acquire Earn.com, Earn USA Inc., formerly known as 21 Inc. As 21, Earn originally worked on chips and hardware for cryptocurrency mining, with the expectation that they would be incorporated into everyday devices – for example, the infamous bitcoin toasters.

Earn eventually built its own bitcoin mining “Bitcoin Computer” based on the tiny Raspberry Pi computer that could become part of an Internet of Things network, allowing users to deploy their own cryptocurrency-funded networked services. After rebranding to Earn.com, the company launched a messaging platform that pays people to reply to mass email marketing and surveys.

The acquisition talks are still in an early stage, last reported by CoinDesk in March, and could exceed $120 million in value. Earn.com Chief Executive Balaji Srinivasan would potentially join Coinbase under the terms of the deal currently known.

Image: Coinbase