With the price of bitcoin continuing to crater, Silicon Valley-based crypto-mining outfit PeerNova has raised $8.6 million in funding to refocus its business on blockchain-based enterprise products.
Bitcoin valuations are currently hovering dangerously near the sub-$300 mark, raising doubts about the long-term viability of the asset as an alternative currency. The heavily-hyped crypto-currency has descended from a bubble-high of $1000+ in December 2013, making it possibly the worst investment of 2014 across a range of comparable asset classes.
With this in mind, bitcoin startups and VCs backing the currency are turning their attention to the distributed ledger blockchain technology underpinning bitcoin as a safer investment bet. It enables new classes of secure financial asset transfer and asset registry applications that do not need trusted third parties and intermediaries, thereby reducing transaction costs significantly.
PeerNova, formed from the merger of mining companies HighBitcoin and CloudHashing in May last year, says it will use the new $8.6 million funding round - led by Mosiak Partners - to boost investments in research and development, accelerate the launch of its Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and expand its service delivery capabilities by growing sales, marketing and support teams.
Naveed Sherwani, CEO of PeerNova says: “This is a significant step that further solidifies our belief in the blockchain as the remarkable invention of the 21st century. This investment will help us hire the best of breed in software engineering talent, expediting our development timelines. We will be launching our first industry-leading applications in 2015.”