Gem, based in Venice and formerly known as BitVault, has secured $2 million in a major funding round.
The round was led by First Round Capital and Tekton Ventures. Other investors include: RRE Ventures, MESA+, Amplify.LA, Birchmere Labs, Idealab, ECEG, Partners, Baroda Ventures, Wavemaker Labs, Bitcoin Shop, Inc. (OTCQB: BTCS), Crypto Currency Partners, QED Associates, and Angel investor James Joaquin.
The inclusion of Bitcoin Shop is noteworthy. There have been recent reports of cost cutting measures at the company.
According to its website, Gem provides Bitcoin application developers with pre-built, full stack Bitcoin API, wallet and security functionality. With this out of their way, developers can focus on the application's unique components and potentially complete it with just a few lines of code.
Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and Founder of Gem, said, “There are currently over 16,500 Bitcoin apps in development on GitHub. Our goal is to help every developer focus on their overall product vision and user experience, without the need for expertise in cryptography, security and the underlying Bitcoin protocol.”
Jim Robinson, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at RRE Ventures added:
“The secure solution Gem has built is the sort of disruptive innovation that has been lacking in the Payments industry for a long time now. And now we've added Ken to the team, a guy who was one of the original pioneers for making our credit cards safe to use online. This is a team with strong security chops building key Bitcoin infrastructure.”
Gem has also brought on former PayPal exec Ken Miller as Chief Operating Officer.
