Some big news today coming from Blockchain. The United Kingdom-based company has announced that they have raised a whopping $30.5 million in Series A funding — a record in the bitcoin industry. The funding was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Wicklow Capital.
Blockchain (or Blockchain.info) was launched in 2011 and gained immense popularity beginning in early 2013 when the first major bitcoin bubble took place. Today, the wallet service touts 2.3 million consumer wallet, with over $26 billion worth of bitcoin successfully transacted.
“The company has grown exponentially in every way over the last eighteen months,” says Peter Smith, Blockchain’s President. “We are honoured to add investors and partners to the team with deep expertise in financial services and consumer technology.”
The company says they will be using the funds to scale its product and expand its engineering team in effort to develop and bring new features to market.
They’ll also be using the funds to expanding their bitcoin wallet functionality and bring their services to more users around the world, and they’re preparing for a huge volume of newcomers.
“Bitcoin is a long game and the wallet is the crucial strategic high ground in the Bitcoin ecosystem,” said Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and now a board member at Blockchain. “We wanted to back the biggest player in the most important segment of the Bitcoin value chain, and that is Blockchain.”
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin companies, also participated in the round.
“The potential for a global transformation in payments powered by Bitcoin is very exciting,” he said. “Consumers are being offered much greater control and freedom with their money and more of them have chosen Blockchain’s safe and easy to use wallet to hold their Bitcoins than any other.”