Bitreserve, a next-generation financial service that makes using digital money easy, fast and free, has raised a staggering £6.3m ($9.6m) from crowdfunding platforms Crowdcube and Venovate (for US-based investors), smashing Crowdcube's previous record of £1.9m ($2.9m).
The transatlantic raise is the first of its kind and will close to the crowd on January 12th. Bitreserve expects to close the round to institutional investors at the end of January with a total of £7.9m ($12m) raised.
More than 130 everyday investors committed over £500,000 ($760,000), amounting to more than 6% of the expected total raise. Bitreserve’s pitch was Crowdcube’s 100th business to reach its goal, the largest raised in Crowdcube’s history, and the second largest crowdfunding in the digital currency sector. The raise was augmented by accredited US investors who were introduced to the opportunity and shepherded through the process via San Francisco-based online brokerage platform Venovate. Bitreserve will be using the capital injection to expand its engineering team, corporate hiring, and to support international expansion.
Bitreserve enables members to hold bitcoin as stable, real-world value -- euros, dollars, sterling, yen, yuan and gold -- but still spend it as bitcoin. This shields Bitreserve members from bitcoin’s wild volatility, and enables cloud money that is instant and free to send and receive. Bitreserve is also the first real-time transparent financial service, publishing a real-time, verifiable proof of solvency, so members always know their value is safe.
Tim Parsa, Bitreserve’s President, commented: “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, said: “Bitreserve is the first digital currency company to raise on Crowdcube and the fact that it smashed its investment target demonstrates s investment target demonstrates there’s real interest in the future of digital money.”
Michael Raneri, CEO of Venovate, said: “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.”
Since opening to the public in late October, Bitreserve has been a source of dramatic innovation in the virtual currency space, providing a haven from bitcoin volatility, enabling cloud-based gold value with bitgold™, and announcing that it will enable bitoil™ in 2015.