cross pond high tech

Blockstream has raised $55m in Series A funding to continue its work expanding the bitcoin code base for commercial use.

With the news, Blockstream's total funding rises to $76m over two investment rounds. To date, the company's signature technology has been its sidechains offering, currently in testing, which enables the creation of blockchains that can validate data from, and transfer assets to, other blockchains.

Blockstream’s round was led by venture capital firms AXA Strategic Ventures, the venture capital arm of French multinational insurance firm AXA Group; Digital Garage, the Tokyo-based online payments firm co-founded by Joi Ito; and Hong Kong venture capital firm Horizons Ventures.

AME Cloud Ventures, Blockchain Capital and Future\Perfect Ventures were among other investment firms that participated in the deal.

Given the recent interest in private and permissioned blockchains, Blockstream sought to underscore the versatility of its technology as well as its early efforts to bring added functionality to the bitcoin network through interoperable blockchains.

Blockstream CEO Austin Hill told CoinDesk:

"We were one of the first companies that painted a vision for interoperable blockchains, that there wasn’t going to be one blockchain, but many of them, all building off the bitcoin codebase to deliver the technology."

Still, Hill said the company remains dedicated to developing technology for the open-source bitcoin blockchain, which it called the "most mature, well-tested and secure" infrastructure for blockchain services.

"What we would hate to see happen is the most robust and secure blockchain protocol getting left by the wayside if people moved on to different protocols and tech stacks that bitcoin isn’t designed for," Hill continued, adding:

"We believe there is a benefit to society to have all these blockchains be interoperable."

L’institution publique a  rassemblé 11 partenaires pour créer un groupe de travail de place sur la  technologie derrière le Bitcoin.

Vous avez dit «  blockchain  » ? Cette technologie ouverte et libre, qui  permet aujourd’hui la circulation de monnaies cryptées comme le Bitcoin, est loin d’avoir livrée  tous ses secrets. Mais elle suscite un engouement inédit dans le secteur  financier qui y voit le moyen de repenser complètement la manière dont il gère  et authentifie les transactions. Surtout visible outre-Atlantique, cet intérêt  se matérialise désormais aussi en France. Ce mercredi, ce sont des banques (BNP  Paribas, le groupe BPCE, le Crédit Agricole), des assureurs (CNP Assurances et  AXA), le Pôle de compétitivité « finance innovation », l’association Croissance  Plus, le conservatoire national des arts et métiers et plusieurs start-up spécialisées dans  cette technologie (Blockchain Solutions, Cellabz, Paymium) qui se sont  rassemblés sous l’égide de la Caisse des Dépôts pour lancer un groupe de travail  de place sur le sujet.

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