Funding Overview: Anycoin Direct Raises €500K, Colu Gets $2.5M, BitFlyer Closes its 3rd Fundraising Round with $1.1M

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by Eugenia Romanenko · 5 min read
Funding Overview: Anycoin Direct Raises €500K, Colu Gets $2.5M, BitFlyer Closes its 3rd Fundraising Round with $1.1M
Photo: Jason Benjamin/Flickr

Anycoin Direct gets €500K in funding, while blockchain technology platform Colu and Japan-based BitFlyer raise $2.5M and $1.1M in funding, respectively.

In tech business like in any industry it’s all about luck: to expand having obtained funds from investments or go bankrupt without even being noticed. Let’s have a look at such companies as Anycoin Direct, Colu and bitFlyer which were pretty lucky and managed to raise a lot of money becoming even more powerful and popular.

Dutch Anycoin Direct Raises €500k in Seed Funding

An instant buying and selling cryptocurrency platform Anycoin Direct launched its services in 2013 and was focusing on the Netherlands, then, in 2014, it started providing several local methods of payment such as MyBank, SEPA, iDEAL etc. and expanded to Europe.

Now, Anycoin Direct gets €500,000 in funding and reaches Canada via its partnership with San Francisco-based Salt Technology, Inc. providing INTERAC Online payments services to its Canadian customers. INTERAC Online is a service providing clients with the possibility to pay for goods and services via the Web using money directly from their bank accounts, but without sharing their financial details.

Jim Brown, Vice-President at Salt Technology, Inc., comments the partnership: “SALT is very excited about the launch of Anycoin Direct in the Canadian market, their attention to security and the end-user experience aligns well to our belief in what will make a successful customer purchase interaction.”

“The main focus of Anycoin Direct lies on speed and ease of use, using our services people can buy and receive cryptocurrency within 5 minutes,” according to the company’s blog. “As soon as we receive a successful payment from a validated account, the coins will be automatically sent to the customer’s address.

“To prevent fraud and abuse the coins will be sent after 24 hours for unverified accounts. Verifying is fast and easy using our fast validation procedure, which takes less than 10 minutes to get fully verified.”

Moreover, Anycoin Direct provides on-line support for clients who have questions regarding bitcoin or the service in general via a chat on the site, phone or email. It’s logical that Anycoin Direct’s customer service is considered to be one of the best in the industry.

“We have a long way to go to make bitcoin available to everyone in the world. People need an easy and trusted way to buy bitcoin, using local payment methods that they trust,” notes Lennert Vlemmings, a co-founder of Anycoin Direct.

Israeli Bitcoin 2.0 Startup Colu Attracts $2.5 Million Seed Round

Colu, a blockchain technology platform, announced that it raised a $2.5 million seed round of funding. They aim to build a blockchain technology platform to provide unique access to everyday purchases.

“There’s so much complexity in our everyday lives,” says a co-founder and CEO of Colu, Amos Meiri. “Our goal at COLU is to use the blockchain’s ability to safely enable access to everything from online purchases to opening the front door of our vacation stay and locking the door of the car that brought us there. It’s a broad spectrum of uses but completely possible using blockchain validation and security.”

“The team behind COLU has been a thought and implementation leader of Colored Coins, the first viable Bitcoin 2.0 platform,” states Eden Shochat, equal partner at Aleph. “We’ve been fortunate to invest in an incredible team that’s committed to delivering on the broader promise of Bitcoin.”

Amos Meiri is convinced that bitcoin is “the most secure database on the planet”.  But still, a lot of things depend on a market in bitcoin.

Colu’s app is now in beta. Its tokens are based on a protocol called Colored Coins. Being developed by the team several years ago, the protocol itself is layered on top of bitcoin.

“Even if bitcoin drops down to $10 it will still be the most secure spreadsheet,” claims Mr.Meiri.

 BitFlyer Raises $1.1 Million from Japanese Bitcoin Investors

According to the company’s statement, a fundraising round of approximately JPY 130 million has been closed “in order to expand its [bitFlyer’s] comprehensive Bitcoin platform and marketplace.”

BitFlyer is the first Bitcoin company based in Japan since the crash of Mt. Gox. The firm makes possible to trade for those who have a Japanese bank account.

Among investment organizations there are RSP Fund No. 5, GMO Venture Partners and Bitcoin Opportunity Corp which invested in bitFlyer as well as in several Bitcoin companies in 2014.

Yuzo Kano, CEO introduces BitFlyer’s aims: “The purpose of this funding will be to further strengthen our Bitcoin related businesses in the domestic as well as international markets, set up overseas offices, recruit new talent, accelerate service development, and carry out marketing and advertising campaigns to promote business growth.

“In addition, the synergies gained through close collaboration with our investment partners, customer base expansion, and the strengthening of our revenue base will help to facilitate our global business expansion. We will continue to pursue our primary goals of improving security while providing the best possible services to our customers,” he added.

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