Earlier this year, Swedish bitcoin exchange Safello made headlines for snagging roughly $600,000 in venture capital from some of the heaviest hitters in the bitcoin world: Erik Voorhees, Roger Ver and Blockchain.info CEO Nicolas Cary. Yesterday, Safello announced that it had raised an additional $250,000 in VC funds, this time from Bitcoin Opportunity Corp (BOC),…
Multi-service bitcoin startup Xapo announced in a blog post today that the company has secured an additional $20 million in Series A-1 funding, bringing the total invested in the Palo Alto-based company to $40 million. The investment trumps the previous record of $30 million set by bitcoin-processing giant BitPay earlier this year. Although considered something…
Latin America-focused bitcoin payment processor BitPagos raised $600,000 in its first round of seed funding. Investors included well known bitcoin advocates Tim Draper and Barry Silbert, as well as contributions from venture capital funds Pantera Capital and the Boost Bitcoin Fund. BitPagos participated in the Boost VC accelerator program last year, where it raised over…
In a new report on CoinDesk, bitcoin-focused venture capital investment in the first half of 2014 has blown past total investment in 2013 by more than $27 million. Last year, startups like Coinbase and BitPay were still in early seed rounds, with total investment hitting about $88 million. Since January, however, second-round investments in those…
San Francisco-based bitcoin mining hardware maker BitFury announced today that it had secured a new round of financing worth $20 million dollars. Investors in the new round included Binary Financial, Crypto Currency Partners, Georgian Co-Investment Fund (GCF), Queensbridge Venture Partners and ZAD Investment Company. Angel investors Bill Tai and Jonathan Teo were also involved in…
TechCrunch is reporting that Atlanta-based bitcoin-payment processor BitPay has received a new round of investment funding from Index Ventures, with Virgin’s Richard Branson and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang also participating. If true, the rumored $30 million investment would be the single largest funding round for a bitcoin startup. The report claims that BitPay’s new valuation…
In the venture capital world, it’s hard to find a better track record than Fred Wilson’s. The 52-year-old financier was on the front lines of the dotcom bubble, using his experiences to inform a new range of investment with co-founder Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures. He’s backed projects like Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga and…
The venture capital world has been spreading their money around the bitcoin ecosystem in a big way this week. While much the attention is understandably going to the $17 million raised by Circle, two smaller VC investments may have even bigger impacts in the coming months. San Francisco-based bitcoin exchange Kraken has raised $5 million…
Boston-based bitcoin startup Circle has always been a little vague about what exactly it is they’re building. The company’s website has rarely provided more detail than “building digital currency products that make money simpler, safer, and more powerful,” prompting no end of speculation about what kind of service Circle would eventually provide. Are they a…
Startup accelerator Boost is aiming to make itself the Y Combinator of the bitcoin world. Last year, the venture capital company funded ten bitcoin-related startups in summer and winter classes. Over the next three years, Boost aims to grow that number tenfold. Speaking with CoinDesk yesterday, Boost’s founder and CEO Adam Draper explained the program’s…