What is Blockchain.com and how does it work?

Blockchain.com is a crypto company that lets people look up bitcoin and other blockchain transactions, buy and sell crypto, and store it. It is one of the oldest firms in the industry. Its products work in different ways, so the main thing to know is whether a given feature leaves the company or the user in control of the coins.

What is Blockchain.com used for?

According to the Bitcoin Wiki, the company was founded in August 2011 in York, England, by Peter Smith, Nicolas Cary and Ben Reeves. It started as Blockchain.info, a bitcoin block explorer, launched a wallet in 2013 and rebranded to Blockchain.com in 2018.

Today people use it to:

• Search public blockchain data in its explorer.
• Buy, sell and swap crypto through a trading account.
• Hold crypto in a self-custody wallet.
• Trade on prediction markets, which its site lists through Polymarket and its own Snapmarket.

On May 21, 2026, Blockchain.com announced that its holding company had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the SEC for a US initial public offering, The Block reported. The number of shares and price were not set, and the article described the company as headquartered in Dallas.

What is the Blockchain.com wallet?

The name covers two products, and its terms of service, updated in August 2026, separate them clearly.

• Blockchain.com Account. Assets in the trading account are held by Blockchain.com for the customer on a custodial basis, possibly in shared addresses and in hot or cold storage. US residents contract with Blockchain.com, Inc.
• DeFi Wallet. This is self-custody software. The terms say Blockchain.com never takes possession or control of the assets and has no technical ability to access them, reverse transactions or recover wallets. Backing up the wallet's recovery credentials is the user's job.

That difference matters if a password or seed phrase is lost. The wider trade-off is explained in custodial vs non-custodial wallets.

What is the Blockchain.com exchange?

Blockchain.com launched its exchange in July 2019, according to Wikipedia, which also describes its brokerage as filling trades from the company's own holdings or from other exchanges rather than only matching users against each other. Fees, limits and which coins are offered depend on the customer's country, so the app's own fee screens are the reference. How firms like this earn money is covered in how do crypto exchanges make money.

What is the Blockchain.com explorer?

The explorer is the original product and is still free to search. Its pages list Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Bitcoin Cash, along with charts of hash rate, daily transactions and network fees. Pasting a transaction ID or address shows the amount, fee and confirmation status. An explorer only reads public data and cannot move or reverse funds. A walkthrough is in how to use a blockchain explorer.