![]() This is a really exciting strategic partnership.” Coil founder and CEO Stefan Thomas who was formerly the CTO of cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs will join Imgur’s board. Our investors are happy with the valuation. While the new round brings in fewer dollars, Schaaf explains that Imgur raised at a valuation that’s “higher than last time. With the same unpersonalized homepage for everyone, it’s fostered a positive community unified by esoteric inside jokes. It’s grown into the premier place to browse ‘meme dumps’ of 50+ funny images and GIFs, as well as art, science, and inspirational tales. The startup bootstrapped for its first five years before raising a $40 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz and Reddit. 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’” says Alan Schaaf, founder and CEO of Imgur. “Imgur began in 2009 as a gift to the internet. Imgur and Coil will earn a cut too, diversifying the meme network’s revenue beyond ads. Users pay Coil a fixed monthly fee, install its browser extension, the Interledger protocol is used to route assets around, and then Coil pays creators dollars or XRP tokens per second that the subscriber spends consuming their content at a rate of 36 cents per hour. Imgur will eventually launch a premium membership with exclusive features and content reserved for Coil subscribers. Today Imgur announces that it’s raised a $20 million venture equity round from Coil, a micropayment tool for creators that Imgur has agreed to build into its service. But 300 million monthly user meme and storytelling app Imgur wants to pioneer a way to pay creators per second that people view their content. Remixed and reshared across the web, their jokes prop up social networks like Instagram and Twitter that pay back none of their ad revenue to artists and comedians. Meme creators have never gotten their fair share.
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