Imgur Gets $20 Million Investment From Former Ripple CTO’s Startup

By Prashant Jha

According to a press release published on the 26th of June, 2019, Imgur, an image hosting and meme website, has received funding worth 20 million dollars from micropayments startup Coil, a company founded by former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas. Thomas is also the Chief Executive Officer of Coil, and is slated to join Imgur as a director as a result of this move.

The press release notes on this account that:

“As part of the transaction, Stefan Thomas, Founder & CEO of Coil and former CTO of Ripple Labs, Inc., will be joining Imgur’s board of directors.”

Detailing on the way the funds will be utilized for the platform, the press release tells us:

“The funds will go towards continuing Imgur’s company mission of making the internet a more positive place.”

Speaking of the transaction, Imgur founder and CEO Alan Schaaf commented:

Imgur began in 2009 as a gift to the internet. Over the last 10 years we’ve built one of the largest, most positive online communities, based on our core value to ‘give more than we take. Everything from the way we operate as a team to the ways in which we partner with brands is built around this core value of giving to the community. Coil’s technology will open up new opportunities for users to give to one another and support the community in new ways.”

The press release goes on to explain that the platform associated with Coil allows users subscribe to content created by other users. They can further make use of the company’s application programming interface to forward micropayments to whoever may have created the content.

The release also talks about how the partnership stands to create whole new avenues for Imgur to earn profits while also serving the users better. This will also help it scale up its existing business model built around advertising.

Clearly, the crypto industry insiders are diversifying to more areas of the tech space and this investment is a reflection of that.