UK-based digital asset services company Elliptic, best known for its Elliptic Vault product offering, has announced $2m in seed-funding from Octopus Investments.
With the funding, Elliptic will be able to further its product development and strengthen its foothold as the trusted provider of enterprise digital assert services in the British market. It will soon offer a set of enterprise services meant to reconcile traditional finance and digital assets.
“We’re seeing a clear trend of highly-skilled fintech talent seeking opportunities in forward-thinking tech companies, rather than traditional financial firms,” Elliptic CEO James Smith told CoinDesk, “which means we have many great options in terms of growing our team.”
This is the first major public venture capital investment in a bitcoin company based in the UK. Equally exciting, Smith added, is how supportive institutional investors like Octopus Investments have increasingly become. The company expects to see many similar investment moves in the coming months.
The funding comes amid increased attention in secure bitcoin storage systems, as evidenced by a recent $20m Series A-1 investment round raised by Xapo and Coinbase’s introduction of a new higher-security vault accounts.
Business trajectory
The new capital comes six months after Elliptic launched Elliptic Vault, the world’s first bitcoin deep-storage service. However, the funding will allow Elliptic to further advance its efforts around customer acquisition to this service and others.
Since its January launch, Elliptic has seen law firms and hedge funds adopt Elliptic Vault for their businesses. One of those businesses includes JPMorgan trader Dan Masters’ Jersey-based and first-ever regulated bitcoin investment fund, the Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund.
Elliptic will also be better able to reach its goal of becoming the trusted provider of enterprise digital currency infrastructure, Smith said, adding that the company can grow its team and iterate quickly on its current enterprise storage product.
He revealed that the team will add more services that help companies streamline the introduction of digital currencies into their existing processes:
“[We’re] putting Elliptic at the heart of digital currency infrastructure. We will provide the key tools the industry requires to grow, from reporting and audit to better trade management and more.”
Bitcoin in the UK
Citing the increasing clarity on digital currency taxation and regulation, and a widely respected regulatory regime, Smith said:
“The UK and Europe are very proactively encouraging innovation and competition in financial services.”
For example, last month the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority announced an initiative to ensure that the regulatory environment supports “positive developments” like bitcoin. Further, the UK and Ireland recently played host to two major bitcoin conferences, Bitfin and CoinSummit London.
For more CoinSummit coverage, read our full recaps of day one and day two of the event.
Image via Elliptic
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Original author: Tanaya Macheel
