In early 2012 two young men applied to Y Combinator together. One was Ben Reeves. The other was Brian Armstrong, who would go on to found Coinbase. They did not finish the application as partners.
The disagreement was about a single design question: should the users control their own wallets, or the platform? Reeves held to the first view and carried on alone. That quarrel is the origin of one of the biggest rival pairings in crypto, and few people retell it.
The disagreement was about a single design question: should the users control their own wallets, or the platform?
Reeves had started Blockchain.info in August 2011 in York, England, with a website that let anyone watch bitcoin transactions, a block explorer. The sources do not give his birthplace or university. What is documented is the setting. Reeves, Nicolas Cary and later Peter Smith worked from his flat in York, and Roger Ver gave the first funding.
The early years were as fragile as the currency. In February 2014 Apple removed the app from its App Store, which caused backlash in the bitcoin community. It was reinstated in July 2014. By then Peter Smith had joined as chief executive, and in October 2014 the company raised US$30.5 million, then the largest funding round in digital currency.
The company grew slowly through a long winter. A US$40 million round in June 2017 valued it at US$280 million. Then crypto surged. In March 2021 a US$300 million round, with US$100 million from Baillie Gifford, valued it at US$5.2 billion.
The cost of that speed arrived in 2022. Three Arrows Capital's insolvency left about US$270 million in loans in default, and in July the company laid off roughly a quarter of its staff, about 150 people. In November 2023 a US$110 million Series E, led by Kingsway Capital, kept it going.
Today about 60 percent of revenue comes from brokerage and market services and about 40 percent from retail users, and Dealroom lists it at US$7 billion in November 2026.
The quiet lesson in the York flat and the failed application is that a principle can split a partnership before the company even exists. Reeves chose self-custody over a partner, and a decade later the company he kept building still carries that choice.