We are excited to announce the launch of Luno across several new European markets. This means people from 40 countries around the world can now easily buy, sell and store Bitcoin with Luno.

At Luno, our core mission is to bring cryptocurrencies to everyone, everywhere - and in a way that makes everyone’s journey into the world of cryptocurrency safe, super easy and highly enjoyable. Despite the unprecedented market demand for cryptocurrencies all over the world, there has been a surprising lack of high quality and secure, yet easy-to-use products and services in many regions, in particular Europe. We’re changing that today.

At the same time, we’re also extremely excited to announce our recently closed USD9m Series B round, led by one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms, Balderton Capital. We’ve known the Balderton team for many years and we’ve been impressed with their wealth of experience in helping global businesses scale and achieve success; their experience and networks, our shared vision for the industry, and a strong alignment of values make them fantastic partners for the next stage of our journey.

The round also includes another new investor: AlphaCode, the fintech investment arm of Rand Merchant Investment Holdings (RMI). They’re a leading financial services group that has built and invested in some of the largest and most well-known financial services companies in Africa and the United Kingdom. We’ve also known RMI for many years and given their extensive experience in the financial services sector and working closely with management teams to build a number of industry-defining companies, we’re also very excited to have them on board.

Last and certainly not least: our loyal supporters from day one - Digital Currency Group - also participated again in this round. All our new investors are joining our strong existing investor group which includes emerging market tech giant, Naspers, who led our USD4m Series A round, and leading Southeast Asian venture capital firm Venturra Capital.

The funding will be used to make it even easier to buy, store and learn about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, in more ways and in more places. This means that our next sprint focuses heavily on improving and refining your cryptocurrency experience, no matter who you are or where you’re from.

It also means that we’ll at the very least be doubling our existing team of 70 and hiring across all units, from engineering and product to business development, customer support and compliance, across all three of our main hubs: our HQ in London, and offices in Singapore and Cape Town.

If you have the moontality to become a Lunaut and help drive one of the biggest transformations the modern world has ever seen, join us for this once-in-a-lifetime journey.

From our early roots of being the first company in the world to build a fully-integrated Bitcoin pilot system for a major bank, over the subsequent few years launching consumer wallets, exchanges, and merchant services to become the market leader in Southeast Asia and Africa, starting to build our UK presence in 2016 and now finally launching across the wider Europe: we are now one giant leap closer to our goal of bringing cryptocurrency to everyone, everywhere.

A massive thanks to all our amazing customers all over the world for helping us reach this important milestone. Your support, feedback, endorsements, and overall enthusiasm for the industry and for Luno is highly energising and the ultimate reason we’re building this company for you.

To the moon!

Marcus