Uphold’s crowdfunding campaign on BnkToTheFuture.com ended over the weekend, with the company raising more than $3.1 million, surpassing its $2.5 million minimum goal. Uphold gave out 2.36% equity during this campaign, making it the highest valuation ever on BnkToTheFuture and the second highest total raised in a single campaign. Accounting for Uphold’s previous campaign on BnkToTheFuture for a hair over $2 million back in July 2014 makes Uphold the most funded company on BnkToTheFuture.
By funding the company for a total of $3,111,252 for 2.36% equity, the BnkToTheFutre crowd investors are putting a $131,832,712 valuation on Uphold, an 57.47% increase from the valuation investors gave it back in the aforementioned 2014 campaign when Uphold raised $2,009,204 in exchange for 2.4% equity giving a total equity value of $83,716,833. It should be pointed out that crowdinvesting, as a new avenue for funding may or may not prove to be an accurate representation of a company’s actual value.
One-hundred and thirteen investors contributed to the more recent Uphold campaign for an average of $27,533 per investment. That is a much higher per-investor average than would typically be seen in a crowdfunding campaign, and higher investor averages seem to be a consistent trend in crowdinvesting campaigns.
Uphold was founded by Halsey Minor, a pioneer of early internet business and is currently headed up by CEO Anthony Watson. Formerly known as BitReserve, Uphold calls itself “the internet of money” as it allows for the transfer of value between various different fiat currencies, commodities, and bitcoin. It claims on its BnkToTheFuture pitch to have already transacted over $630 million in “cloud money transactions.”
BnkToTheFuture is a crowdinvestment platform that is in many ways not unlike a typical crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter. However, while there is a crowdfunding component to BnkToTheFuture, it is primarily focused on crowdinvesting where instead of receiving perks or prototype products, the investors receive some equity in the receiving company. It is designed for “qualified investors” only.
Since its relaunch earlier this year, BnkToTheFuture has focused primarily on Cryptocurrency companies, with ShapeShift, Storj and E-Coin among some of the well-known cryptocurrency companies that received funding on the platform. Currently, BitPesa and Brave New Coin are running investment campaigns on the site, with nine and eight days remaining on each campaign, respectively.
Uphold is partnered with Minor’s other venture, the Virtual Reality creation platform Voxelus, you can read more about Voxelus and Uphold by reading our previous interview with Halsey Minor.
We will keep you up to date on all major cryptocurrency crowd investment platforms.