Anastasia Emmanuel, the European director of technology and design at Indiegogo hinted that the company may start accepting Bitcoin sometime in the future. She said that to a Cointelegraph correspondent after her speech at the Slush conference. It sounded like a hint but, if there is any chance of Indiegogo actually adopting Bitcoin, it would have a positive influence on the development of the cryptocurrency.

Indiegogo is a well known, established crowdfunding platform, which helps millions of companies and startups to raise funds for their ideas and bring them to life. The main idea of Indiegogo is to democratize funding, to make capital more accessible for people all over the world. For now, the company seeks to develop equity crowdfunding as they consider it to be the future of finance. Anastasia told Cointelegraph:

“I absolutely think it’s a part of our financial future and our platform tried to fix the problem of equity crowdfunding seven years ago. But we couldn’t as it didn’t actually exist then. And we had this feeling that people wanted to become a part of the company they funded. I mean, it’s much more exciting not to invest in banks where you get bad interesting rates, but in a local pizza place or in a guy that will surely work fifteen hours a day to bring his idea to life”.

Crowdfunding platforms as interesting and useful as they are, do however present risks because there is no guarantee campaign supporters will get their funds back if and when things go wrong. Therefore, it needs a proper regulatory framework, which is the main issue, at least for now. Anastasia Emmanuel added:

“I think regulations are important. And it’s also important that regulators understood the whole potential of crowdfunding. These companies will raise a lot of money and hire a lot of people. It’s good for the economy. So it’s important that the system isn’t over regulated”.

Another issue faced by Indiegogo, just like every Internet project, is fraud. However, Anastasia remains optimistic about that. She says it’s quite difficult to perform any kind of fraud because the company has a strong protection mechanism, composed of both people and digital means. Besides, people will simply not support a company or project if it appears non-trustworthy or something feels not quite right.

Indiegogo is looking forward to the adoption of equity crowdfunding as it has a disruptive potential for the the investments ecosystem. Anastasia continued:

“We’re instrumentally in the process of doing the job. We still don’t know what exactly we will do or how it will look like, but we’re definitely looking at it. Equity crowdfunding may not disrupt the financial industry but it will definitely make people smarter. In fact, it already does”.

The company is constantly on the lookout for the latest, disruptive innovations, it is safe to assume that Indiegogo will eventually support Bitcoin after a trial. Emmanuel concluded: