The cryptocurrency lending company BlockFi has raised $350 million through a Series D fundraising round led by prominent names such as Tiger Global, Bain Capital Ventures, and Pomp Investments. The firm plans to utilize this considerable amount for new product releases.
Founded in 2017, BlockFi is a firm describing itself as a “financial services company dedicated to building a bridge between cryptocurrencies and traditional financial and wealth management products.”
Earlier this week, the company announced the completion of a Series D fundraising round, in which names such as Morgan Creek Digital, Valar Ventures, Paradigm, Kenetic, and more raised $350 million.
Currently valued at $3 billion, the newly-gathered funds will enable “further innovation in the product suite, accelerate expansion into new markets, and provide capital for select acquisition opportunities.”
Before the Series D, the company completed a Series C funding in August 2020, as reported. Apart from raising $50 million at the time, Morgan Creek Digital’s co-founder and partner, Anthony Pompliano, joined BlockFi’s board of directors.
“Our conviction that digital assets are the future of finance has been vindicated by our client base, which grew 10x year-over-year in 2020 and has more than doubled since the end of 2020. Digital assets will continue to democratize finance, serve as a hedge against inflation and expansionary monetary policy, and promote innovation in financial technology and accessibility to financial services.” – commented CEO and Co-Founder of BlockFi, Zac Prince.
Just a few days before the aforementioned announcement, Forbes reported a bad actor that had infiltrated BlockFi’s lending platform.
The undisclosed attacker spammed the signup page by creating thousands of accounts. He used over 1,000 emails to make the registrations, and at least half were identified to belong to real users.
More worryingly, the hacker put vulgar and racist terms in the fields for the first and last name of each account, which flooded the system with numerous unfinished registrations.
According to Prince, this attack was designed to “try and create negative sentiment around BlockFi by trying to get emails sent with vulgar language in them.”
The lending platform temporarily suspended new signups while fighting the attack. Nevertheless, the signup page has been reactivated as of writing these lines.
The article was first published on Mar-11, 2021
