Bitcoin.com, a provider of crypto exchange and wallet services, said it has raised $33.6 million in a private sale of its VERSE token.
The raise was backed by Digital Strategies, KuCoin Ventures, Blockchain.com, ViaBTC Capital, Redwood City Ventures, 4SV, BoostX Ventures, and individuals including Roger Ver, Jihan Wu and David Wachsman, the company said in a press release on Thursday.
The company describes the token as a “rewards and utility token distributed to users who contribute to and participate in the Bitcoin.com ecosystem.”
Current Bitcoin.com products include a self-custody wallet app, the Verse distributed exchange and Bitcoin.com news. It is set to launch a crypto-enabled debit card. The company says the token will complement these, with a public sale taking place in June.
The company’s current suite of products net more than 4 million monthly active users as well as 30 million self-custody wallets.
Bitcoin.com is the latest firm with a news element to announce a fundraise this week. Online crypto publication Decrypt annouced a $10 million Series A round on Tuesday.
VERSE, which will initially be minted as an Ethereum (ERC-20) token, is closely comparable to CRO, BNB and FTT, the utility and rewards tokens for the Crypto.com, Binance and FTX offerings respectively, the release said. Some VERSE features can also be compared to the native tokens of centralized finance platforms like Nexo and Celsius, as well as the native tokens of decentralized trading protocols such as Uniswap and TraderJoe.
June’s public token sale will see Bitcoin.com issue 12.6 billion VERSE, or 6% of its total supply.
