Verisart Raises $2.5M Through Blockchain For Art And Collectibles Certification

Introducing Verisart 

Being the main pioneer in the space where a lot of talks has been made about verifying valuable items on an immutable blockchain is Verisart appearing to use a blockchain and to create the certification for the fine art and the collectibles market. Verisart eschewed the fundraising bonanza, despite the blockchain hype thereafter preferring to instead perfect the model building partnerships. 

Besides raising $ 2.5 million in seed financing in a round led by Galaxy Digital EOS VC Fund the changes are coming with further investment from existing investors Sinai Ventures and Rhodium as the funding is used thereby expanding Verisart’s commercial platform for authentication further expanding in the art world. As the co-founder and CEO, Robert Norton comments, the new round of funding comes with being able to scale their business and ramp up their partnership integrations where the art world quickly realized that blockchain provides the new standard in provenance and record keeping, that they are looking forward to extending the services to the industry. 

In this context, it is important to note that the $ 325 million Galaxy EOS VC Fund comes with a partnership between Galaxy Digital which is a blockchain-focused merchant bank, and Block.one who is the publisher of EOSIO which is a blockchain protocol. Extending towards the product and engineering team is the funding that launches a suite of premium services aimed at artists, galleries, and collectors where the company recently appointed Paul Duncan formerly the founding CTO of Borro which is an online lending platform for luxury assets to lead the engineering team. 

The launch of Verisart in 2015 was the first company that was applying blockchain technology to the physical art and collectibles market working with the world’s best-known artists that include Ai Weiwei as well as Shepard Fairey certifying their works of art. Subsequently in 2018 Verisart won the hottest blockchain DApp award at the Europas which is the European tech start-up awards. As also it comes to be the first blockchain certification provider on Shopify offering digital certification for limited editions, artworks, and collectibles. Thereafter other players are entering the growing blockchain-for-art market with a new startup called Codex Protocol putting art on the blockchain.  

The Hack Fund Is Being Used As Crypto To Give Early Liquidity To Startups

As a pair of investors create a new way to turn tokens into true equities, it is now that utility tokens come to be the popular and international way to fund major blockchain projects. Jonathan Nelson and Laura Nelson are the investors who have created the Hack Fund which is an investment vehicle allowing start-ups to launch what is amounting to blockchain stock certificates according to Jonathan. 

As he comments, their previous business models had exchanged equity from start-up companies for their services which wrapped equity into funds as they sold it to investors. Coming as high net worth individuals are the fund investors including family offices and institutions. Hack fund however is representing a new business model just as the Hack Fund leverages blockchain with investors all over the world coming at all levels participating in start-up investing thereby trading blockchain stock certificates. It is also available to a limited number of accredited investors in the US as its SEC compliant structure is meant to be.

Originally creating Hackers/Founders, a tech entrepreneur group in Silicon Valley, the team has now the support of 300,000 members in 133 cities and 49 countries where it is a vehicle supporting some of the start-ups in the Hackers/Founders network. As Jonathan says the Hack Fund with the heritage of Hackers/Founders has a large, unique global network providing Hack Fund with an unparalleled reach and deal flow across the global technology market. Even though a few blockchain-based funds appear they have limited themselves to blockchain only investments unlike typical venture funds, Hack Fund providing quick liquidity for investors leveraging blockchain technology made typically illiquid private stocks tradeable. 

Here it is quite interesting to know about the idea behind Hack Fund where in most cases the investing in a company leads to up to ten years of waiting for a liquidity event. In this case with blockchain-based stock certificates, the investors can however buy shares that are bought and sold instantly while company performance drives the value up or down. Start-ups, therefore, are becoming more and more liquid in an instant where it can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the founding team. 

As he further explains, the Hack Fund comes as a publicly-traded closed-end fund where the venture investment comes valued every quarter with an independent third party that has audited and posted to the blockchain for all of the token holders to review. It is observed that there are no K-1 statements issued as well as no partnership / LLC and rather Hack Fund is an investment company similar to Berkshire Hathaway investing in the same manner as early-stage venture capitals did. 

The Concluding Thoughts

Already being kicked off across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America as also to a small number of accredited investors of blockchain in the US, the $ 100 million fundraise was viewed to be rounded out with $ 2 million from retail investors able to buy some of the tokens through BRD wallet.