This is why the start-up environment sucks in Europe. It seems so (relatively) easy to get $20 million in US as a start-up, while it seems almost impossible to get that kind of money in Europe from an investor, which is why there are so many "winner takes all" companies from US and not from other places.

This happens at a time when Bitstamp is several times bigger than Coinbase, also growing fast, and is covering both EU and US. Yet, because of this sort of funding (and probably more later), there will probably be yet again a US company dominating the scene.

In a post-Snowden relevations time, I'm not very eager to continue using US services, but the environment seems to be so harsh for non-US companies that want to be global companies, and they basically have to grow themselves into global companies only through bootstrapping (the vast majority of them, I'm sure there are a few exceptions).