Friday, 22 January 2016

Blythe Masters and Digital Asset Holdings Raise Over US$50m In Funding

Various Bitcoin companies around the world are looking for investors to get their project moving along and deliver services to a broader audience. Digital Asset Holdings, a blockchain startup run by Blythe Masters, recently closed a new funding round, raising over US$50m from various global financial leaders. With this money, the company will eventually be able to bring blockchain technology use cases to people all over the world.

Also read: BTL Announces Launch of Its Blockchain Remittance Platform (Interbit) at BC Tech Summit

Digital Asset Holdings Secures Funding

Based on various mainstream media headlines over the past few weeks, the future of Digital Asset holdings was in peril. The blockchain startup was struggling to raise additional funding, as potential investors were not entirely convinced of the service offered. But it looks like those reports were premature, as over US$50m has been secured by the company, and the future’s looking bright.

Developing Distributed Ledger Technology for the financial services industry is a challenging task. It goes without saying that any company active in this industry will need a lot of time, manpower, and financial aid to bring this technology to the traditional financial world. But Blythe Masters and Digital Asset Holdings can count on a select group of investors who want to see this project succeed.

Among the recent investors are firms such as ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Citi, J.P. Morgan and Santander InnoVentures. So many established financial players who are looking for alternative infrastructure solutions are of great value to Digital Asset holdings and the general blockchain community.  In the end, all parties want to achieve the same goal: reducing costs and making the financial system more efficient and secure.

Digital Asset Holdings CEO Blythe Masters stated:

“These investments represent a tremendous endorsement of Digital Asset from banks, exchanges, settlement and clearing firms, central securities depositories, and market infrastructure and professional services providers. Our strategic investors have come together from across the financial services industry to help drive global adoption of transformative solutions which enhance the vital services that they provide.”

By securing over US$50m in additional funding, Digital Asset Holdings can continue the road to bringing Distributed Ledger Technology to various partners all over the world. By creating tailored business logic applications on top of privately permissioned blockchain, financial players will be able to communicate with one another by using a cryptographically secured infrastructure.

Expanding The Board of Directors

As a result of this successful round of funding, Digital Asset Holdings also announced how they will be expanding their Board of Directors.  Several of the investors will see one of their staff join the Digital Asset Holdings Board, although not all of the names had been confirmed at the time of publication.

DTCC Ceo and President Mike Bodson said the following:

“Distributed Ledger Technology offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-imagine and modernize the industry’s infrastructure to address long-standing operational challenges. This investment positions DTCC to play a leading role in fostering industry-wide adoption and helping to introduce the standards, governance and technology to support distributed ledger implementations. We look forward to working with our partners at Digital Asset to explore opportunities to improve upon the existing infrastructure in certain defined areas where automation is limited or non-existent and where the technology provides a clear benefit over existing processes.”

Mike Bodson is one of the four new Board of Directors members for Digital Asset Holdings, along with BNP’s Catherine Flax,  Deutsche Börse Group’s Ashwin Kumar, and J.P. Morgan’s Sanoke Viswanathan. Together with the existing board members, Digital Asset Holdings can continue its mission to build distributed and encrypted processing tools.

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