The US cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken has secured a phenomenal £13.5 million in funding from more than 2,000 different investors on the online investment platform BnkToTheFuture.

It’s worth highlighting that the firm’s initial investment goal of $6.2 million was reached in just a few days of the campaign.

Kraken is one of the few established cryptocurrency exchanges in North America that also offers margin and futures tradings.

Crowdfunding

So, if you’ve never heard of crowdfunding here is a quick summary.

Basically a creator, company - or in this case, cryptocurrency exchange - can ask the public to raise money for a certain project. In 2015, more than $34 billion was raised in total by crowdfunding.

The great success from Kraken’s crowdfunding event has actually encouraged the exchange to change its total investment target from $10.2 million to $15.45 million.

Based in San Fransico, the firm isn’t shy to show off its huge user base of more than four million and an impressive compound annual growth rate of 387 percent. Summarising its goals, the exchange said that it hopes to use these fresh funds to add new financial services and products related to the blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Another popular exchange, Coinbase has garnered capital worth $525 million over the course of ten funding rounds since 2012. But other exchange platforms have raised funds solely from the venture, Kraken has gone the opposite route by choosing to approach individual investors and those familiar with crypto and blockchain technologies.

The CEO of Kraken Jesse Powell was quoted by Yahoo! Finance earlier this year, saying:

“The reasons to not do more VC is that we don’t really need the money, and longer term it makes sense for the business to be majority owned by the users. We’d eventually like to have our interests aligned with users.”

Kraken’s Future

Even though this crowdfunding round was a great success for Kraken, we don’t know how the firm will expand its portfolio and offerings but it will be interesting to watch. Make sure you keep an eye on Kraken over the rest of the year to see what else they get up to.