Announced exclusively on Bloomberg TV, Blockchain.info CEO Nic Cary announced that his company has purchased RTBTC.com, a real-time trading platform developed by Clark Moody they’re re-branding as the ZeroBlock Trading Platform (if you recall, ZeroBlock was acquired by Blockchain.info last year).
“By merging a world class trading platform with the most popular mobile Bitcoin app Blockchain will lead the way for institutional investors,” said Cary.
This move will transform the informational ZeroBlock service into a full-fledged bitcoin exchange, providing traders with real-time access to exchange prices, news headlines, and more. Better yet, investors will have the opportunity to carry out their trading via the mobile application — which is one of the (if not the) most popular bitcoin-related app on iOS and Android. While existing ZeroBlock services will remain free, a new pro version of the applicate will have the trading features enabled (among other things).
“Acquiring RTBTC was a perfect fit for ZeroBlock’s existing product,” said Dan Held, ZeroBlock co-founder and product director at Blockchain.info. “Our features and services are highly complimentary, and we are excited to bring additional functionality to our users.”
“What Clark has built is incredible. RTBTC was developed solely by Clark over the course of two years. We were very happy to have the opportunity to partner with him.”
As part of the deal, Clark Moody will be joining the Blockchain.info team, working with Held in product strategy at ZeroBlock.
The acquisition was reportedly done completely in bitcoin, though Cary declined to say how much the deal was worth. He did, however, note that his company’s acquisitions are getting larger and larger, so it’s assumed a significant amount of money was involved here.
For the ZeroBlock trading platform, a one-day free trial is available, and a subscription is available for $20/mo. RTBTC has, to date, facilitated over $150 million in trading volume across multiple exchanges.
This is great. I’ve been wanthing to try RTBTC for awhile but never get around to it. Bitstamp has terrible trading interface, so this seems like a good way around that, and hopefully they will add other exchanges as well.