OB1, the society behind the Bitcoin-powered digital marketplace OpenBazaar, announced today the completion of a $3,000,000 funding circular that saw participation from Union Square Ventures (USV), Andreessen Horowitz in addition to BlueYard Capital.
This novel circular of funding brings the full invested inwards OB1 to $4 million. In Apr of 2015, $1 ane 1000 1000 was injected into OB1 from USV, Horowitz in addition to angel investor William Mougayar, to larn OpenBazaar upward in addition to running.
OpenBazaar essentially allows eBay-style online commerce without the require for a corporate intermediary.
The press release states:
“By removing the intermediaries for commerce online, OpenBazaar enables its users to avoid paying fees or having their merchandise controlled yesteryear middlemen. OpenBazaar has been used yesteryear tens of thousands of people internationally since its launch inwards Apr of this year.”The projection is open-source in addition to the novel funding volition hold out used yesteryear OB1 to expand the functionality of platform in addition to to curlicue out the novel OpenBazaar 2.0, which volition utilization the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for storing in addition to maintaining listings.
OpenBazaar’s success over the yesteryear twelvemonth was sufficient to prompt farther investment from USV, “The accomplish in addition to multifariousness of OpenBazaar usage shows the potential for decentralized applications: inside a calendar week of its release, buyers in addition to sellers from 129 countries joined the network in addition to began transacting amongst each other for free,” explained Brad Burnham, managing partner at USV.
The Berlin-based BlueYard Capital is too a trouble solid supporter of the decentralization drive in addition to backed OB1 to aid choose the OpenBazaar platform into the mainstream, “If OB1 tin halt prepare OpenBazaar into a marketplace that is suitable for mainstream adoption in addition to render a substantially ameliorate trouble organization proffer to merchants in addition to buyers, it could perish a superior merchandise platform for large global markets,” states BlueYard Capital.
While the recently-formed, $120-million BlueYard Capital fund has entirely only started to dorsum bitcoin startups, USV & Andreessen Horowitz get got been pouring millions into the digital currency infinite over the final ii years. More recently, Union Square Ventures in addition to Andreessen Horowitz placed $10 ane 1000 1000 into cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Polychain Capital.