BitGold has secured $3.5 million in Series A funding. Participants include PowerOne Capital, Soros Brothers Investments, Sandstorm Gold and PortVesta Holdings.
The Toronto-based company will be officially launching its services in February. Interested parties can also join the queue for its pre-launch invite.
According to its website, "BitGold's mission is to provide global access to gold for Payments and secure savings, making this extraordinary element useful and empowering again."
The company would bring gold to the Blockchain , allowing users to easily gain access to the metal as well as use it for payments. As gold is typically stored in secure vaults and inaccessible for spending as a currency, the service seeks to "digitize" the precious metal, even making it available to micro-payments. Said founder and CEO, Roy Sebag:
"True gold ownership requires gold to be safely vaulted and stored, making it extremely difficult to spend, especially in micro-transactions. At BitGold, we solved this problem by developing a platform that is part gold exchange, part payments technology and part custodian, resulting in a powerful user experience that advances gold from a physical element to an instantly accessible unit of account and store of value for the internet, an operating system for gold."
BitGold emphasizes the "elemental" nature of gold, thereby making it a "neutral, natural unit of account." Bitcoin itself has been compared to gold, and it has been argued that their finite supply makes them ideal as stores of value. Both, however, have experienced steep price declines in 2014.
Similar offerings have been launched earlier this year, though none have reportedly secured such funding.
For a detailed list of recent investment and M&A activity in the crypto industry, please visit the DC Magnates Crypto Deal Table.
