You know when some market is getting serious traction? When non-tech billionaires start pouring money in it.
And so we bring you the story involving the somewhat controversial billionaire George Soros who has decided to invest, albeit indirectly, in blockchain technology.
Overstock gets big bucks from Soros
Overstock.com has recently scored a whole lot of money, much of which will go towards the company’s blockchain-related efforts.
Quantum Fund, managed by George Soros, which holds of a warrant has exercised its right to buy $100 million worth of shares in Overstock, according to the CEO Patrick Byrne.
Of the $100 million, Byrne said that $20 million will fund DeSoto Inc., the blockchain property rights joint venture he is working on in partnership with economist Hernando DeSoto.
The rest of the money will be used to fund Overstock’s flagship e-commerce platform — which happens to accept a number of cryptocurrencies — as well as the other blockchain ventures that are part of its Medici Ventures subsidiary.
But, here’s the interesting part, Byrne sees those two businesses working more closely in the future.
“Maybe it’s about time we stop seeing Overstock as two separate businesses,” he told CoinDesk. “Our retail platform had 40 million unique people come to it last month. So as we’re developing these blockchain applications, these blockchain companies, the retail business is an extremely valuable business to have in terms of bringing awareness and traffic to the blockchain properties that we anticipate developing.”
He went on to add: “By having the retail business involved, what we can really create is the wormhole between the two universes, the universe of conventional and the universe of crypto.”
What about tZERO?
Byrne also mentioned tZERO, which is Overstock’s blockchain development platform for capital markets, as another area where some of the proceeds would be headed. He added that the newly acquired funds won’t be used to purchase any of the crypto tokens issued in an initial coin offering (ICO) by tZERO in December.
However, Overstock itself will be buying $30 million worth of tZERO tokens with other funds.
During the initial phase of its ongoing ICO, tZERO received $100 million in commitments from investors interested in purchasing the crypto tokens.
Medici Ventures invests 2M in a blockchain voting startup
In a move that may have something to do with the newly raised funds, we have Overstock’s subsidiary Medici Ventures leading a seed funding round in mobile voting platform Voatz.
Said startup raised over $2.2 million in the round, which also saw the participation of the Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners, as well as angel investors including Walt Winshall, Tom Williams, Joe Caruso and members of the Walnut Ventures angels group.
Voatz plans to use the money to grow its business development team, widen its services across the U.S. and work towards the development of new products.
Blockchain, as you probably already know, ensures immutable record keeping to deliver greater confidence in the accuracy of results and enable citizens to participate in elections without barriers.
Voatz’s blockchain-based mobile voting platform ensures secure record-keeping and identity verification; it has already been deployed by universities, state political groups, and non-profit organizations for their internal voting functions.
And we gotta wonder – where else will Overstock be putting its money?