Collective eruption: A survey of venture capital of virtual money enterprises in recent years

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Since 2012, the payment service has become the center of innovation in financial field, and virtual currency is one of the most dazzling branches. According to the capital Laboratory statistics, 2013 1-June, domestic and foreign financial services enterprises received investment cases 125, turnover of 2.3 billion U.S. dollars. Among them, the number of transactions in the payment service area reached 50, and the number of transactions continued to be the first in comparison with last year. In the field of payment services, involving Bitcoin and other virtual currency start-up companies 8, investment cases 10, invested more than 17.4 million U.S. dollars. It can be said that the value of virtual money enterprise is getting the sustained attention of capital, and in the first half of 2013 to achieve a collective demonstration and outbreak.

The first half of the investment in the virtual money enterprise basically covers the current most mainstream virtual currency, such as Bitcoin (Bitcoin), reboxetine currency (ripples), easy currency (BIZX). There are both established companies in 10 ago, but also the newly born upstart, representing today's virtual currency ecosystem: trading platform (providing virtual currency of its own trading services, such as BitInstant), Exchange platform (providing virtual currency and real currency exchange services, such as OpenCoin) , payment platform (such as GLIPH virtual wallet) ...

In the case of investors, we can see IDG, "PayPal Help" and other top institutions, but also see Winklevoss brothers, Shakil Khan and other new investors on the virtual currency of enthusiasm. Visible, around the virtual currency and the traditional financial system to produce a fierce collision of new things, virtual money enterprise investment, financing both sides have a "brave heart."

It is certain that the investment cases included in this report are only a small part of the investment case in the virtual currency field. Because the virtual currency has a huge ecosystem, in addition to the above enterprises, the virtual money industry chain of the various links must have more enterprises have been invested or about to get investment.

1.Coinbase became the first bitcoin enterprise to complete a round of financing

Coinbase is the simplest way to Buy,use, and accept Bitcoin.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Coinbase is a bitcoin start-up in 2012, which provides the user with Bitcoin storage, redemption and purchase services. Coinbase's Bitcoin business is charged at 1% rates. According to the company's data, the current number of its contracted merchants have 300 or so (including content aggregation site reddit.com, dating site okcupid.com, etc.), registered users have more than 160,000, and at 12% a week to increase the speed. More than 100,000 months of trading pen, the monthly turnover of more than 15 million U.S. dollars, the last three months trading volume increased 15 times times.

In the September 2012, Coinbase had been invested by IDG Angel. In May 2013, Coinbase received $5 million in investment from Union Square Ventures, Ribbit Capital, SV Angel, and FundersClub. After receiving this round of investment, Coinbase began to invest more in design and technical engineering, with the goal of providing users with a better application experience, so that consumers and businesses can easily use Bitcoin to quickly complete payment.

2.bitpay1 month after Angel investment, newly financed 2 million dollars

Bitcoin Payment FX for popular ecommerce

BitPay is a start-up company that offers Bitcoin payment solutions. It believes that "credit cards are not for the internet," trying to challenge the traditional credit cards, the goal is to "do the coin domain paypal." Specifically, BitPay provides users with 0 risk, 0 fraud, instant, simple exchange transactions, instant payment to the account and other Peer-to-peer services, the charge rate of 0.99%. Its main competitors are: Bitcoin, Coinbase.

BitPay maintained a very rapid pace of development: Last November to this March, the cooperative merchants grew from 1300 to more than 2,100. In this process, the famous blog platform WordPress become BitPay Partner and the growth of its customers have a very big driving role. As of July, BitPay has more than 7,000 contracted businesses, and in the past few months, about 5 million dollars worth of goods and services have been paid through BitPay.

In January 2013, BitPay received a 510,000-dollar seed fund from Shakil Khan (a former investment in path, Spotify, secondmarket) and other investors. By May, BitPay received 2 million dollars in investment from the Founders Fund, created by the PayPal gang. The investment is partly a sign of the rapid change in payments and the need to pay close attention to the strong trends in the bitcoin sector and work with them on behalf of the new generation of payment tools.

3.BitInstant quickly expanded to 1.5 million dollars

An intersection of business, Bitcoin, Bankingand global monetary revolution

BitInstant is a Bitcoin trading platform, the main business is to buy, sell Bitcoin. In April 2013, the transaction completed on BitInstant reached 30,000. BitInstant now has 30% of the world's Bitcoin trading volume, and is still expanding to try to overtake the world's largest Bitcoin trading platform Mt.Gox.

In May this year, the Winklevoss announced that it had brought 1.5 million of billions of dollars in investment to the Bitcoin company as early as last autumn. The maverick and famous Winklevoss brothers are said to have 1% of the currency in circulation.

4.Coinsetter financing 500,000 USD, will launch Bitcoin leverage trading platform

Buy, mini-advertisements and short Bitcoin withleverage

Coinsetter is committed to providing a more secure and easy-to-use platform for bitcoin transactions. In April 2013, the platform was funded by 500,000 of dollars from institutions such as tribecaventure, and individuals. This is also the first external investment that the agency has received. After obtaining this round of investment, Coinsetter will launch a bitcoin forex trading platform, allowing people to carry out margin-based leveraged transactions and short selling transactions. It can be said that in the current Bitcoin ecosystem, Coinsetter is one of the biggest and most aggressive companies.

Coinsetter said it would further enhance the attractiveness of Bitcoin traders, foreign exchange traders, and online gamblers by tapping into the security of the transaction and deepening the transparency in order to reduce the impact of market manipulation on Bitcoin prices, thereby optimizing the bit-currency solutions offered. In addition, the platform plans to launch "anti-hacker insurance" to try to solve the security concerns of Bitcoin users.

5.Gliph in Boost VC startup accelerator, and get 50,000 dollars investment

Secure Texting Bitcoin Payments

Gliph is a bitcoin peer-to-peer payment application and is also a secure bitcoin payment authentication system. Users can use the Bitcoin wallet they store in the Coinbase, and in the Apple App store, Google play and other platforms to pay the Bitcoin SMS. In May 2013, GLIPH announced its presence in the boost VC venture Accelerator, becoming a member of a number of Bitcoin companies invested by the incubator. This will enable GLIPH to obtain many advantages including mentors, seed money and product development. and Gliph into the business incubator after the first task is: The whole summer to further integrate Bitcoin digital identity platform, and enhance the user experience.

Meanwhile, Gliph's boost VC incubator created the boost Bitcoin Fund. The fund was newly obtained from Lightspeed Venture, Rothenbergventures, Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, and angel investor Ben Davenport (founder of Beluga, the mass Information services company) $50,000 trillion in money for investment in the incubator's bitcoin business.

6.OpenCoin to be funded by IDG and top Silicon Valley investors, and to increase China's market focus

OpenCoin Inc. is committed to a simple,global and open currency system.

OpenCoin is the world's first open payment network ripple creation, operation, maintenance agencies. OpenCoin's ambition is to integrate the global virtual currency and payment system. On the platform, users can carry out transfer transactions in dollars, euros, renminbi and other currencies, even including their own currency: Bitcoin. Transfer procedures are simple, transactions can be completed in a few seconds, transaction costs are almost zero. The development of the above business is the virtual currency ripples (XRP, UBS). Like Bitcoin, Ripples has its own known limit, and currently generates 100 billion ripples. Unlike the bitcoin distribution mechanism, ripples do not need to be dug up.

Following the April 2013 acquisition of Angels by Andreessen Horowitz and other institutions, opencoin in May, the IDG, Google Venture, and founders Fund, Angel and other funds to fund the joint venture. This is the IDG capital investment after Coinbase, in the field of virtual money another investment.

OpenCoin is headquartered in San Francisco, USA. According to sources, OpenCoin is looking at the Chinese market, Ripple Chinese website is about to launch.

7. Established digital Money Community BIZX financing 700,000 USD

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BIZX was founded in 2002, its basic business is to provide users with an efficient dedicated digital currency community, the creation of the original intention is through the "multi-party asynchronous Exchange" in order to improve the efficiency of goods and services transfer, reduce the cost of the merchant. The company is one of two barter companies certified by the International Barter Trade Association (analysys reciprocal mini-advertisements association,irta).

BIZX is working for Inc. Magazine, Oakland Raiders,greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Walt ' s Auto Care centers, etc. to represent the hotel, restaurant, media, advertising, beauty, decoration and other industries to provide solutions, Help companies save money, increase sales, get new customers, and optimize inventory by matching services and transactions with each other. At present, more than 2,200 enterprises and 8,000 individual users are using the services provided by BIZX, the annual turnover of goods/services is nearly 50 million U.S. dollars. The current value of Bizx currency is: 1 bizx$ = 1 usd$.

In April this year, the company won 700,000 dollar investment from Seattle Angel investors, mainly for mobile applications and BIZX consumer product development. The company opens offices in Seattle, San Francisco and Dubai.

8. Angel in love with Bitcoin: Bitcoin Angel Network Bitangels financing 6.7 million USD

World ' s distributed veteranentrepreneur and angel investor group.

An angel investment network, called Bitangels, raised $6.7 million worth of bitcoin to more than 60 investors in May 2013. This is also the first Bitcoin Angel investment network. The virtual currency raised by the network is not used for trading, but will be used to help entrepreneurs build or incubate Bitcoin start-ups and participate in the construction of Bitcoin ecosystems.

Unlike the average Bitcoin investment agency, Bitangels is not a formal investment fund, with more than 60 investors in the investment network not only having a wealth of bitcoin investment experience, but also a bitcoin digger and a large number of holders. They will provide investor counseling and advice to bitcoin entrepreneurs on a regular basis and provide all possible help and support.

According to the latest report, the fund has been established in less than one months, has been sought after by many investors, the fund's current number of investors has doubled to 120, raising money has nearly 18 million U.S. dollars. Its first investment of $100,000 was invested in a high seas incubator--blue Seed. The incubator has attracted a group of bitcoin start-ups.

Note: This abstract from the capital laboratory, "virtual currency venture Investment and Trends Report", this article address: http://www.coinsay.com/article/coinsay_3275.html