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BlockFi, the highly acclaimed New York-based BTC lending platform, has announced that it has pooled in a whopping sum of $30 million in a Series B funding round. The new funds pooling round was followed by an $18.3 million Series A funding round organized in August.
According to the latest reports, the funds collected will aid the BlockFi team in strengthening and expansion of both its product offering and global presence. The Series B funding was led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. The other participants of the event included Morgan Creek Digital, PJC, Akuna Capital, CMT Digital, Winklevoss Capital and Avon Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Purple Arch Ventures, Kenetic Capital, Arrington XRP Capital and HashKey Capital.
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“We decided to opportunistically raise the Series B to expand the balance sheet and give ourselves the ability to invest in the things we’re doing this year,” stated Zac Prince, the BlockFi CEO.
During an interview interaction, Prince affirmed that the firm aspires to proliferate into the Singapore marketspace with the help of HashKey as an investor partner. The spearhead is planning to grab the attention of potential institutional investors in the Asia-Pacific region which is flooded with mining firms, asset managers, exchanges, and market planners. The company has shifted its focus on using local languages on its site and offerings with a view to attracting more and more retail customers.
The first quarter of 2020 is likely to witness the launch of a mobile app along with the ability to send fiat wire transfers. Quarter 2 will pave the way to the offering of Automated Clearing House payment systems. BlockFi is speculating about doubling the size of its employees’ team from the existing 75-person team by the end of this year. It has been involved in providing fiat loans against BTC and ETH collateral since 2019. The company has affirmed having more than $650 million in assets on its platform. This was a sharp 160 percent rise from the $250 million in assets reported in August with a 0 percent loan loss rate. The firm unveiled a service offering clients interest on their virtual assets holding in March. It later transitioned its operations in loaning out to institutions. BlockFi had to slash its rates more than once as the borrower supply failed to meet the growing depositor demand.
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To face the complexities of the bullish crypto market, BlockFi stated that it had slightly reduced the yield for customers lending bitcoin and ether.
