BlockFi has announced that it has raised another $30 million in funds.
This was a second round of financing led by Valar Ventures, in which Morgan Creek Digital, PJC, Akuna Capital, CMT Digital, Avon Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Purple Arch Ventures, Kenetic Capital, Winklevoss Capital, Arrington XRP Capital and Hong Kong based HashKey Capital participated among others.
After raising these additional funds, the company’s objective is to provide a mobile banking service including loans and a premium system.
BlockFi, in fact, is a cryptocurrency lending company, but expects their spread to vary depending on how many consumers use their services for everyday purchases. So the aim is to make it easy to invest in cryptocurrency for people who have never done so.
To this end, in 2020 they want to launch a mobile service linking bank accounts to their lending service, via credit cards: in practice they want to act as a bridge between cryptocurrencies and fiat money, but offering fully compliant services for the US market.
Among the services they already offer there is also a crypto lending service, which consists of an interest rate account based on cryptocurrencies that provides an annual percentage return of up to 8.6% on BTC, ETH and stablecoins. These are cryptocurrency-backed loans that provide investors with access to a liquidity pool of up to 50% of the value of a USD asset.
To date, the company manages more than $650 million on its platform, and in 2019 it increased its revenues more than 20-fold.
Vice President of Operations and co-founder of BlockFi, Flori Marquez, said:
“For most people, cryptocurrencies are something out of speculative fiction. Adoption of these assets is limited by the average consumer’s ability to understand how to use them. We’ve demonstrated that we can build financial products around cryptocurrency that can look and feel like the apps you already have on your phone, and we’re well-positioned to drive mainstream adoption”.
One of Valar Ventures’ partners, Andrew McCormack, commented:
“We were proud to have made our first investment in the crypto sector with BlockFi, and we’re excited to continue propelling the company forward as they define the industry standard for what a modern financial services company for cryptocurrency looks like. To say the least, BlockFi has been one of the most successful companies we’ve invested in right out of the gate”.
