Daniel Daboczy, CEO and Co-founder of FundedByMe, commented:
“We see that among our investors, a great many of them are early-adopters. We also know that bitcoin users are familiar with new inventions at an early stage. That’s why we thought that we may offer both groups something interesting.”
The pilot project was started with the launch of an equity crowdfunding campaign for Safello, a Bitcoin trading platform. Safello aims to bring greater compliance and security to the Bitcoin industry. The test period for bitcoin payments will last 45 days, the length of the Safello campaign.
Frank Schuil, CEO and Co-founder of Safello, added:
"We have already done it in previous rounds of raising funds. On the other hand we know that many of our customers would be interested to invest if they can do so with Bitcoins. As a Bitcoin company we of course need to support this. For customers who are already verified with Safello this will also be the easiest way to invest."
Daniel Daboczy explained:
“I don’t worry about the success of this campaign – it’s very attractive and there will probably be many investors wanting to allocate their money. Especially since it’s anchored by a lead investor, the Digital Currency Group, which incubates and seeds bitcoin and blockchain technology-related companies, and CEO Barry Silbert has been the most active seed investor in the digital currency industry with over 50 investments in 15 different countries. But I’m curious about how it works out with Bitcoin investors.”
“FundedByMe is probably the most flexible crowdfunding platform at least in Europe. Which means we support our investors whoever they are, wherever they are and whatever form they want to transfer their money.”
At the beginning of February FundedByMe launched a loans-based crowdfunding service for small and medium sized businesses in Sweden. The businesses will be able to borrow from investors around the world, except North America, which should make the lending process more efficient than a traditional bank.
Entrepreneurs are attracted to the platform through lower interest rates. However, there are other benefits to using the platform. As Daniel Daboczy again elucidated:
“We understand business much better than traditional financial sector so we offer other benefits as well. We are not only more flexible, but among others we create the new groups of customers for enterprises, due to building community around them. Being social is a very important trend in business right now and we have been doing this for last 5 years.”
The platform has now been operating for four years and has raised over 100,000,000 SEK for small businesses.
FundedByMe will be testing the waters to see whether there is sustainable interest from bitcoin investors and if the Safello fundraise will draw bitcoin users to the site. We have seen quite a bit of crossover between bitcoin and the peer-to-peer/crowdfunding space. A few examples include: Bitreserve, an American company that allows customers to hold bitcoin in the form of real world currencies, which used crowdfunding platforms Crowdcube and Venovate to raise $9.6 million earlier this year. OKCoin, a Chinese bitcoin digital currency trading platform and exchange, which started to offer a peer-to-peer function. Although there are a rising number of platforms that use both bitcoins and are involved in alternative finance, we are yet to see one that has gathered significant momentum. We will be watching FundedByMe to gauge the success of this test period.
