River Financial, a cryptocurrency brokerage firm, has announced on Thursday that it secured $5.7 million in a fresh seed Funding Round .
The funding round was led by Polychain Capital, along with participation from Slow Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, DG Lab Fund, Cygni Capital, Pfeffer Capital, and IDEO CoLab Ventures, along with a number of angel investors including Steve Lee.
“In early 2019 River was just an idea. I had spent the last six years in Silicon Valley deeply focused on Bitcoin for the majority of my both my professional work and graduate studies,” Alexander Leishman, founder and CEO at River Financial, said. “I was in awe at how fast Bitcoin grew in popularity and was thrilled to see it getting attention from all corners of the globe.”
Another Bitcoin brokerage in a crowded market
River was founded in January last year to overcome the challenges faced by the Bitcoin traders to invest in digital assets.
Based in San Francisco, the company focused on receiving regulatory approvals and streamline its technologies initially. It is now operating in 19 US states and is aiming to expand its presence in the near future.
The company is also working on the expansion of its services, launching new products.
The fresh proceeds will be utilized in making River a “financial institution focused on bringing Bitcoin to the world,” the CEO detailed.
According to the press release, the platform already has thousands of users and its volume is growing at a rate of 80 percent per month since its launch.
Earlier this year, the crypto brokerage on-boarded Jonathan Wilkins as its chief security officer. He was the founder and CSO of Blockstream and spend years in security roles at Yelp, MySpace, Microsoft, and a few others.
