Crypto Investment Platform Secures Seed Funding from Peter Thiel, Digital Currency Group

Venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has invested in cryptocurrency investment platform Layer1, according to a press release published Dec. 19.

San Francisco-based Layer1 has concluded a $2.1 million seed funding round backed by such industry players as Thiel, crypto-focused venture capital company Digital Currency Group, and American investor and Protégé Partners founder Jeffrey Tarrant, among others.

The company reportedly aims to direct the raised funds to the further development of programmable money and store-of-value applications. Per Layer1 co-founder Alexander Liegl, cryptocurrencies provide an “unprecedented opportunity” for companies to add value, which is “fundamentally different” from the possibilities offered by traditional assets.

Earlier this week, Cointelegraph reported about the launch of Tagomi Holdings Inc., an electronic brokerage startup backed by Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund. Tagomi reportedly aims to ease the operational challenges related to trading digital assets. The company caters to clients that “require institutional operational standards.”

In July, EOS developer Block.one secured investments Peter Thiel and cryptocurrency mining hardware billionaire Jihan Wu of Bitmain. Block.one is the creator of the EOSIO software, a blockchain protocol that aims to support decentralized apps (DApps) on an industrial scale.

Also in July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Founders Fund invested “millions of dollars” in Bitcoin (BTC), citing sources familiar with the matter. The firm purportedly bought between $15 and $20 million worth of BTC.

Earlier this week, global blockchain platform Waves raised $120 million in a private funding round for its new blockchain project called Vostok, which focuses on the deployment of Waves technologies for commercial and government IT systems. The private funding round was led by London-based financial services firm Dolfin.