Very, very big news just broke in the Bitcoin space. According to TechCrunch, Bitcoin payment processor Bitpay has just raised $30 million in what would be the largest single round of fundraising ever in the Bitcoin space. It slightly surpasses the prior largest round, announced late last year by the other major Bitcoin payment processor Coinbase for $25 million.
BitPay is a company that is very familiar to readers of this site. It has experienced exponential growth over the past year or so. I most recently highlighted this in my post: BitPay is Now Adding 1,000 New Merchants Per Week.
This round implies a total valuation for BitPay of $160 million and it makes me wonder whether or not it could herald the beginning of another major move higher in the Bitcoin price. All year, I have been saying that I didn’t think the price would move until the summer. With summer less than two months away, I will become much more sensitive to news.
What makes this investment even more exciting is that Richard Branson (and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang) is purported to be involved. Considering his company Virgin Galatic has already been accepting bitcoin via BitPay, he is clearly impressed with the company and sees a very bright future for Bitcoin. As do I. This is big.
From TechCrunch:
We’re hearing that BitPay, a platform that processes payments in bitcoin for merchants, is raising the field’s biggest round yet. The company is raising $30 million on a roughly $160 million valuation in a round led by Index Ventures, with Richard Branson and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang participating. BitPay declined to comment.