ShapeShift have announced that they have successfully completed a $1.6 million USD funding round. The service has grown by 100x since it started in August 2014, and are aiming for $30 million USD of trading volume per month by December 2015.
The funding round was led by prominent figures in the cryptocurrency world, including Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and Roger Ver. It also included participation by leading exchange Bitfinex, Bitcoin Capital (Max Keiser and Simon Dixon), Mardal Investments, and top industry angels, including Bruce Fenton, Trevor Koverko and Michael Terpin. Much of the investment were crowdsourced through Bnk To The Future.
This round values ShapeShift at around $4.5 million USD.
ShapeShift is different from other exchanges, as it is not custodial, so does not hold the users cryptocurrencies, requires no accounts, usernames or passwords and does not handle any fiat currency. More over, all their server costs, salaries, marketing and legal costs are paid for in Bitcoin.
Zane Tacket from Bitfinex described ShapeShift as “It’s like Google Translate for digital currencies.”
You can watch the pitch video to find out more.
