Marcus Invested in Xapo While Head of PayPal
David Marcus’s tenure at PayPal is officially over, but the ex-president in his final months at the eBay subsidiary individually invested in Xapo — the bitcoin vault and debit card startup.
Marcus has not been listed as a Xapo investor, but Marcus’s investment in the startup in May 2014 was confirmed by a review of Marcus’s LinkedIn profile. Marcus left PayPal in June.
Bank Innovation has reached out to Xapo, who confirmed the investment. A spokesperson told Bank Innovation that Marcus had indeed invested in Xapo in the Series A in March 2014.
Marcus will soon head up Facebook’s Messaging service.
Xapo announced Series A-1 funding earlier this m0nth, when the company raised $20 million. The funding came from Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, Yuri Milner, Emergence Capital Ventures, and was led by Greylock Partners and Index Ventures, but Marcus wasn’t mentioned.
The $20 million investment was Xapo’s second of the year. Last March, the company announced that it raised $20 million from Benchmark, Fortress Investment Group, and Ribbit Capital. The $40 million total investment in Xapo is the largest-ever investment in a bitcoin startup. Xapo’s bitcoin debit card is due to be released later this month.
Marcus has been outspoken in his interest in bitcoin and owns bitcoins himself. At the LeWeb conference in Paris in Dec. 2013, Marcus spoke extensively about the virtual currency:
People are confused. They think because it’s called “cryptocurrency,” it’s a currency. I don’t think it is a currency. It’s a store of value, a distributed ledger. It’s a great place to put assets, especially in places like Argentina with 40 percent inflation, where $1 today is worth 60 cents in a year, and a government’s currency does not hold value. It’s also a good investment vehicle if you have an appetite for risk. But it won’t be a currency until volatility slows down. Whenever the regulatory framework is clearer, and the volatility comes down, then we’ll consider it.
PayPal, meanwhile, still does not support bitcoin. No word on whether Facebook will embrace bitcoin, once Marcus starts working there.
