The Bitcoin based venture capitol seeding fund, “Seedcoin”, has announced its latest round of funding. The startups included in this round include several financial services plus a few surprise entrants.
According to Coindesk, the first funding round of the fund was held in December, and Seedcoin raised 2000 BTC. The second round, dubbed “SF2” which was also worth 2000 BTC, includes seven companies; six of which will receive 250 BTC and the seventh, TagPesa, will receive 150 BTC.
Seedcoin offers several services to the startups who receive funding. These services include networking events with investors and experts in the cryptocurrency world; cloud services and Bitcoin software; as well as sharing in new business models developed by funding partners.
The Seedcoin prospectus explains that an initial public offering (IPO) will be made (via Seedco Holdings Limited) on the investment fund, whereby those who invest do so collectively in the funding round recipient companies. There will be 2,000,000 “units” for sale, sold in four batches of 500 shares, each with a value of 0.001 BTC – thus creating the 2000 BTC total value. The seedcoin IPO will open on April the 28th 11am EST, and will close on the 22nd of June 2014. Those interested in purchasing need to go to the Havelock Investment website.
- The first of the startups to receive the 250 BTC seed fund is the “Bitcoin Transaction Network (BTN) Inc.”. BTN’s aim is to create consolidated “one stop shop” for bitcoin transaction services such as ATMs, exchanges, wallets and pre-paid credit cards, etc. BTN Inc was founded by Benoit Briere and Wayne Miller.
- Quantave Limited is a startup, founded by Hugh Neale and Gareth Grindal, seeking to provide institutional traders with access to Bitcoin exchanges and quantitative analysis. Quantave will be providing a single API to online traders to provide access to market analysis and security advice to the Bitcoin community. The company received 250 BTC.
- Global Coin FX, which is still in alpha testing, is a UK based virtual currency exchange aimed at retail and high frequency traders. It was founded by Christian Papathanasiou and is being developed by a team with experience in developing systems for investment banks. It has also received 250 BTC in seed funding.
- Ignite Financing Limited, is a startup aiming to provide leased access to Bitcoin ATMs. Its pitch is that ATM operators can find the initial cost of Bitcoin ATMs to be prohibitively expensive, and so it will lower the startup costs for other businesses that want to provide Bitcoin ATMs to their customers. It will also provide guidance and information to new ATM operators. It was founded by Terry Woltman, and also received 250 BTC.
- BTC Trip, founded by Martin Fernandez and Ariel Alis, is one of the most unique members of the Seedcoin second round to receive the 250 BTC payout. It describes itself as a “platform for travel & leisure that has developed an innovative solution utilizing digital currencies”. BTCTrip is already an established player in the Bitcoin world for booking hotels and flights, renting cars, etc. The company is said to be in the process of marketing a new identity, @TheBitcoiners.
- BiTnews Media Limited is another novel recipient of the 250 BTC seed fund. Founded by Tomer Kantor, Annie Arnold, Hakim Mamoni, and Louis Chang; BiTnews is described as “the 1st crowd-powered media platform” which is focused on decentralized technologies which doesn’t just include crypto currencies, but P2P energy grids, mesh networks and direct democracy. The team proposes to produce documentaries and a weekly news video.
- TagPesa Limited, received the lower 150 BTC seed funding total. The company is an exchange and remittance company working on providing send and receive money within Africa and aroudn the world. The company was founded by Nhial Majok.
