This Week in Blockchain Venture Capital – Oct. 11 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
This Week in Blockchain Venture Capital – Oct. 11
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Updated: Oct. 11, 2018 at 1:49 pm UTC
Photo by Carl Larson on Pexels
Welcome to This Week In Blockchain Venture Capital, our weekly series detailing blockchain-focused companies that advance and cultivate their mission with venture capital.
Clearmatics
Clearmatics, a London-based startup building next-generation clearing machines for financial over-the-counter markets, recently closed a $12 million Series A round. Participants in the round included Route 66 Ventures (lead), TNF Capital, and XTX Markets.
This funding will be used to expand the team and continue developing permissioned, peer-to-peer networks. Clearmatics will also launch a Protocol Provider service network next year in support of the Utility Settlement Coin Project, a consortium of 17 banks and financial services companies focused on creating a new digital cash product collateralized by central bank money.
According to Benjamin Britt, General Partner at Route 66 Ventures,
“Clearmatics is anything but hype and has stood out in the financial technology and blockchain community by building novel distributed systems that will enable the next generation of market infrastructure.”
Blockfolio
Blockfolio, a Los Angeles-based mobile application providing simplified management and tracking of cryptoassets, recently closed an $11.5 million funding round. Participants in the round included Pantera Capital (lead), BitMEX, Huobi, Danhua Capital, DCM Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Mayfield, and Pathfinder. Boasting more than 4.5 million users to date, Blockfolio is more than just a price-tracking application.
According to Ed Moncada, Blockfolio co-founder and CEO,
“If we were just a price-tracking application, we wouldn’t be able to raise that kind of money.”
Blockfolio currently supports 90 crypto teams that are using the app to issue one-directional updates, with more than 300 projects on the update waitlist. Blockfolio is currently free to download on both iOS and Android. According to Moncada, the application has not been monetized to date and has only implemented three advertisements since debuting in 2015.
ACINQ
ACINQ, a Paris-based Bitcoin technology company focused on the Lightning Network, recently closed a $1.7 million seed round. The Lightning Network is an open payment network that brings VISA-level scalability to the Bitcoin network. Participants in the round included Serena Capital (lead), Yves Weisselberger, Sébastien Lucas, Alistair Milne, and Bertrand Diard. ACINQ currently offers a simple Lightning API for businesses, a popular Lightning wallet, and one of the most reliable Lightning nodes.
This investment brings the total funding of the project to $2 million to date. ACINQ will use the funding to expand its engineering team, develop new Lightning-based products and services, and do anything and everything possible to continue to bolster the Lightning Network.
This concludes another eventful week of blockchain venture capital. See you next week.
Posted In: Investments
