By Georgina McCreadie on Tuesday 13 January 2015
Bitcoin startup Bitreserve has raised $9.6 million from US and UK investors.
Bitreserve allows customers to hold bitcoin in the form of real world currencies but still spend it as seamlessly as the cryptocurrency. One of the well known problems with bitcoin is the volatility of the currency but Bitreserve hopes that its solution of storing the money in more stable currencies will open up more investors to bitcoin.
Bitreserve successfully raised $5 million in a Series A fundraising round in March 2014. This crowdfunding campaign is part of its Series B preferred equity offering and about 90% of which has already been allocated to institutional investors and follow-on Series A investors.
This cross border equity fundraise was hosted by Crowdcube in the UK and Venovate in the US.
On CrowdCube it was aiming to raise £6,000,000 but has overfunded and raised £6,358,464 from 153 investors for 11.27% equity offered. This is a record for fundraise for CrowdCube as it easily tops its previous record of £1.9 million. On Venovate it was aiming to raise $10 million and has so far had $9,917,481 committed.
Halsey Minor, founder and CEO of Bitreserve, commented:
“While this concept is still early, we believe that the new private securities funding models are trending towards right side of history. It supports a future where all investors will have equal rights to participate in the kind of investment opportunities that today are only shown to the wealthy and institutions.”
Tim Parsa, Bitreserve’s President, said:
“It’s been a real pleasure interacting with the savvy Crowdcube and Venovate investors. Raising venture capital has been secretive and elitist for far too long. We share Crowdcube and Venovate’s commitment to transparency and inclusiveness and we’re proud to welcome over 130 new investors to the Bitreserve family.”
Luke Lang, Co-Founder and CMO of Crowdcube, added:
“Bitreserve is the first digital currency company to raise on Crowdcube and the fact that it smashed its investment target demonstrates there’s real interest in the future of digital money.”
Michael Raneri, CEO of Venovate, explained:
“We are delighted to have been a part of this incredibly successful fund raise, bringing added efficiency, transparency and accessibility to the process for both the investor and Bitreserve. Bitreserve is at the forefront of redefining how the world uses currency, and we were excited to offer the qualified investors and advisors on our platform the chance to explore and participate in this type of opportunity.”
This offering is one of the few transatlantic crowdfunding campaigns on record. We have seen some cross-border activity between the US and Canada and we’re expecting to see more of it in 2015.
21 March 2023
Daniel Lanyon