[2018-03-14] Openbazaar Raises $5M from Investors Including Bitmain

[limek]

On Tuesday, March 13, OB1, the company building the cryptocurrency-centric marketplace Openbazaar, has announced it has raised $5 million USD in a recent series A funding round. According to the startup, Omers Ventures and Bitmain Technologies were the lead investors in the funding round for the e-commerce marketplace.

Omer Ventures and Bitmain Lead the $5M Series A Funding Round for OB1

Openbazaar is an open source project that has built a platform that facilitates cryptocurrency infused e-commerce transactions. OB1 has launched the Openbazaar platform with its first release back in April of 2016. Since then the protocol has added many additions like a marketplace wallet, Tor integration, and enabling purchases with bitcoin cash and zcash. Over the past few years, over $4 million in venture capital has been injected into the project. Now, this week OB1 reveals it has raised another $5 million from prior investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and the Digital Currency Group. Moreover, this series funding was led by Omers Ventures and the mining giant Bitmain Technologies.

OB1’s CEO Brian Hoffman says the team is pleased to partner with Omers and Bitmain and hopes the two large firms will help bolster “the future of free trade on the Internet worldwide.” Hoffman explains during the announcement:

        Our goal is to see the Openbazaar protocol and software empower business owners and consumers alike to shift away from the corporate-controlled legacy systems and engage in e-commerce in a free, fair and independent way.


Trading Expansion and an Openbazaar Mobile Platform

The company says it plans to continue expanding Openbazaar in order to give users more flexibility to buy and sell goods in a decentralized manner. This year the OB1 development team plans to release a mobile version of Openbazaar and offer new ways to trade in a peer-to-peer fashion.

“Such as making requests and buying and selling cryptocurrencies,” explains the company. “OB1 is also expanding the services it offers to users on OpenBazaar, such as the Verified Moderators program, released this week.”

The funding news follows the development teams recent multi-currency integration and the increase of 25,000 Openbazaar nodes. Alongside the recent announcement of the Openbazaar token (OBT) which will be based on the ethereum blockchain and aims to process smart contracts within the marketplace environment.

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/openbazaar-raises-5m-from-investors-including-bitmain/

[CryptoBry]

Big money are now being invested in many businesses related to the cryptocurrency boom and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Looking at the potential of businesses like this Openbazaar to make good amount of return for the investors, many would be encouraged to pour their resources too to other similar ventures. To these investors big and small, the future looks bright for cryptocurrency.

[limek]

It is still consider early adoption, as majority of the massive crowd from the global communities don't know much about crypto.

[Kprawn]

Why would Jihan Wu wants to get involved with Openbazaar? I do not see the connection between a decentralized

e-commerce marketplace and bitcoin miners and ASIC chips manufacturing. I wonder if Jihan Wu is reacting on the latest

bans on Facebook and Google? If Amazon and other centralized e-commerce marketplaces starts to ban Crypto currency

items, he could just sell his products on OpenBazaar. 

[senne]

Where everybody is busy in banning crypto , open bazaar has opened arms for it .
Intelligent ventures knows the importance of the future technology and does not just go behind the sheep's herd . It is true that crypto related ads and all its forms of advertisement is getting banned but will that stop the popularity crypto and block chain technology ? NO . The potential opportunity seekers like openbazaar will make some efforts to get some huge profits.

[squatter]

Why would Jihan Wu wants to get involved with Openbazaar? I do not see the connection between a decentralized
e-commerce marketplace and bitcoin miners and ASIC chips manufacturing. I wonder if Jihan Wu is reacting on the latest
bans on Facebook and Google? If Amazon and other centralized e-commerce marketplaces starts to ban Crypto currency
items, he could just sell his products on OpenBazaar. 

There are 2 related objectives. First, Bitmain is expanding and wants to diversify market share after generating unprecedented profits. They want a piece of many different pies. Some of their other recent investments: JoyStream, Simplex, RSK Labs, BitKan, ChainLab, CoolBitX, ViaBTC, Yours, 8btc.com.

Which leads into the second objective. Bitmain is trying to build and promote an ecosystem around Bitcoin Cash. Take a look at each company in which Bitmain was considered the lead investor.

JoyStream: JoyStream is going live on Bitcoin Cash

Bitkan: Bitkan Launches OTC Bitcoin Cash Trading via Mobile App

ViaBTC: ViaBTC Exchange to Use Bitcoin Cash as Base Trading Pair

Yours: Yours.org: Why We Switched to Bitcoin Cash

...... Anyone see a pattern developing? Don't be surprised if 8btc and OpenBazaar become increasingly focused on promoting Bcash -- depending on how invested they are. It's possible that Bitmain was only a minor investor and therefore has little influence on the companies.

The investment in 8btc earlier this month is more concerning to me, given its influence in China. It's not clear in either case how heavily invested Bitmain is.