Bitbond Raises €600,000 to Grow its Global Bitcoin Lending Platform
Global bitcoin lending platform Bitbond today announced an angel funding round of €600,000. The round brings Bitbond's raised capital to a total of €800,000.
Global bitcoin lending platform Bitbond today announced an angel funding round of €600,000. The round brings Bitbond's raised capital to a total of €800,000.
Led by Bitbond’s earlier seed investor Point Nine Capital, a number of business angels contributed significantly to the round. Among them were Florian Heinemann and Uwe Horstmann (both Project A), Christian Vollmann (early investor in ResearchGate and other startups) and Felix Jahn (Home24 co-founder).
Bitbond will use the additional funds to grow its user base and to increase its activity in emerging markets which are underserved by traditional lenders. The platform went live in July 2013. Since then over 600 loans were originated through the platform with 10,000 users having signed up from over 120 countries.
Founder & CEO of Bitbond Radoslav Albrecht said:
“The additional resources will help us to continue realizing our mission which is to make lending and borrowing globally accessible. We are happy to have such experienced investors supporting us on this exciting journey.”
Christian Vollmann said:
“Currently over 50% of small businesses are underserved by banks and don’t have access to credit. Bitbond provides a technological solution to this problem. It’s great to see such an innovative approach being developed in the Berlin startup scene.”
According to the IFC (International Finance Corporation of the World Bank) the global credit gap of microenterprises and small and medium sized businesses is around USD 2 trillion. Bitbond seeks to help solve this problem by creating a global market for small business loans that is accessible to everyone via the internet.
Since its first external funding in August 2014 Bitbond introduced a number of technological advancements. These include exchange rate pegged loans which allow borrowers and lenders to mitigate bitcoin price fluctuations.
In February 2015 AutoInvest was showcased live at Finovate London. AutoInvest is an algorithm that allocates funds of lenders automatically according to their personal investment profile.
Orchard Platform which helps to channel institutional investors’ money to marketplace lenders listed Bitbond in its loan originator database.
About Bitbond
Bitbond is a global peer-to-peer bitcoin lending platform. Small businesses like ebay sellers who need to finance working capital and inventory list their loan request on Bitbond after going through a credit check. The loans get funded by individual and institutional lenders who thereby earn interest with their bitcoins.
By leveraging bitcoin as a technology and payment network, Bitbond is the first global marketplace lender for small business loans. Investing and borrowing through Bitbond is accessible to everybody who has an internet connection. Therefore the platform and its users are independent from the traditional banking system.
Previous to starting Bitbond, founder and CEO Radoslav Albrecht worked at Deutsche Bank London and consulting firm Roland Berger.
Bitbond: https://www.bitbond.com/
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