The year 2015 has been a particularly good one for Bitcoin startups all over the world, as a lot of money was raised over the course of 12 months. A recent report by Consultancy in the Netherlands shows how FinTech, in general, has been booming last year, with close to US$19 bn invested in total. What is of particular interest is the US$474m venture capitalists put into Bitcoin and blockchain startups. Also read: Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 04/04/2016 – Slow Crawl! Venture Capitalists Remain High on Bitcoin After the significant growth of venture capitalist funding of Bitcoin and blockchain companies in 2014, a lot of industry experts were wondering if this trend was sustainable in the years to come. Keeping in mind how numbers increased from US$80m in…
A platform for developing enterprise blockchain applications has raised €600,000 in seed funding. Stratumn, based in Paris, received funding from French venture capital firm Otium Venture and Eric Larchevêque, CEO of bitcoin hardware wallet startup Ledger. The company’s founding team includes Richard Caetano, developer of the bitcoin price and news ticker app btcReport, and Stephan Florquin, a former developer for French bitcoin exchange Paymium. The company is hoping to be an early entrant in the market for enterprise blockchain development, with a particular focus on the notarization of data. Stratumn utilizes an open standard called Chainscript that creates an audit chain for workflows, tying evidence of work performed and validated on the platform to the…
Blockchain startup RSK Labs has raised $1m in seed funding to support the development of Rootstock, a smart contracts platform that would be developed as a sidechain on the bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin mining company Bitmain Technology led the round, which also drew support from bitcoin and blockchain focused investment companies Coinsilium and Digital Currency Group (DCG). In an interview, RSK Labs CEO Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar said that the goal of the project was to build a blockchain network that would attract support from both bitcoin miners as well as developers of smart contract applications attracted to platforms like Ethereum. He told CoinDesk: “Our idea is to leverage everything that has been built by the community so far. Not only on the network…
Various Bitcoin companies and startups have received significant amounts of funding over the past few years. This seems only normal, as the technology and protocol making up the Bitcoin network can be of great value to people and companies all over the world. Abra is one of the companies seeing a lot of funds flowing in, even though they still don’t have a working prototype of their smartphone app. For some reason, they made it to the Angellist top startup list. Also read: Bitcoin Price Watch; Here’s What’s on Today The Story of Abra So Far When the concept of Abra was first brought to the attention, there was a general excitement for this particular smartphone application. Not only will users be able to store cash on their mobile device, but the app will also…
Blockai has announced it has raised $547,000 in seed funding to relaunch as a blockchain copyright service. Originally envisioned as a ‘Netscape for Bitcoin’ in 2015, Blockai (pronounced ‘block-i’) attempted to turn the blockchain into a kind of social media stream that would allow users to send messages and authenticate items. Now, Blockai is bidding for a new life as a tool that allows artists to authenticate and claim copyright over images. According to AngelList, Social Starts, Sterling VC and Vectr Ventures contributed funding alongside roughly 15 angel investors including Betfair founder Josh Hannah and Epsilon Records founder Nate Houk. In interview, CEO Nathan Lands called the latest version of the Blockai product “dramatically…