Bitcoin-powered marketplace OpenBazaar raises $3M from Andreessen Horowitz, USV & BlueYard





OpenBazaar-based company OB1 today announced it has raised a new round of funding from BlueYard, Union Square Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz totalling $3 million in order to further its mission of making trade free for everyone, everywhere.



Brad Burnham – managing partner at Union Square Ventures – said, “The reach and diversity of OpenBazaar usage shows the potential for decentralized applications: within a week of its release, buyers and sellers from 129 countries joined the network and began transacting with each other for free. We believe OpenBazaar has an opportunity to fundamentally transform the market structure of commerce, and we’re excited to welcome BlueYard as a new partner and co-investor in OB1.”



OB1 previously raised a $1 million seed round from Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and angel investor William Mougayar in May of 2015 in order to build and launch OpenBazaar, a completely decentralized marketplace that allows anyone in the world to buy and sell anything to anyone else, anywhere, for free.



This new round of funding will allow OB1 – with assistance from contributors around the world – to continue improving the open source software and growing the peer-to-peer trade community. OB1 is among an ecosystem of businesses building on the OpenBazaar software and offering their own services to users on the network. OB1 CEO Brian Hoffman said, “After launch we were so excited to see how people have been using OpenBazaar, and with this new funding we’re confident it will allow us to bring the benefits of truly free and open trade to the world.”