Altcoin exchange ShapeShift has just raised $1.6 million dollars in funding from the Digital Currency Group, Roger Ver, Bitfinex, Bitcoin Capital, Mandal Investments, Bruce Fenton, Trevor Koverko and Michael Terpin amongst others.
When asked about the funding, ShapeShift CEO Erik Vorhees told CoinDesk the following:
“It took a little coaxing as many Bitcoiner-investors aren’t sold on the concept of other cryptocurrencies. Key to our raise, however, was the ability to demonstrate that tomorrow will be full of digital assets, of all different kinds, and such a future demands a frictionless exchange engine.”
During March of this year the company raised yet another $525,000 from Barry Silver and, once again, Roger Ver. The funds raised from that previous round were earmarked for improving their exchange engine and general business expenses in their Swiss headquarters, while this latest injection of cash will be put to work on scaling the platform and increasing their liquidity (a necessity since their instant exchange limits were raised at the beginning of this month).
The company also made the news a couple of months ago once they decided to stop their New York operations in order to take a stand against the implementation of BitLicense. The BitLicense would’ve required them to register, as the name implies, for a license and could’ve forced the company to collect personal data from their customers, which conflicts with their instant, no-registration-needed model.
“It’s a moral and ethical stand we’re going to take, …” said Vorhees during an interview with CNBC.
ShapeShift also recently added Ethereum to their crypto offerings, due to a massive influx of requests from their users and possibly because Vorhees seems to be a massive fan:
“Ethereum is a wild project and will likely change software architecture in the same manner that Bitcoin is changing financial architecture, … The two projects are beautiful compliments to each other.”
You can follow Erik Vorhees on Twitter by clicking here.
