Luxembourg-based Bitcoin startup CoinPlus raises €172,500 in a first round of funding, and waits to meet with Luxembourg's financial regulator at the end of September.
In a press release, CoinPlus CEO Christian Bodt, said there was still a long way to go, but remains optimistic. He added that an additional funding round was planned to occur before the end of the year.
"The choice of Luxembourg was [obvious]. The country offers high-standard technical and administrative infrastructures, service providers at the cutting edge of technology, proximity with relevant authorities, as well as great open-mindedness. [Luxembourg] is also a reliable place for agents from the financial world."
- Christian Bodt
CoinPlus holds three major projects that are a multi-support payment processor, a digital currency exchange platform, and a secured fund transfer solution.
The startup was launched in July 2014, couple months after Luxembourg's financial regulator the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) announced it recognized Bitcoin as a scriptural currency, and thus, as a legal tender. Bodt said he will be meeting with the regulator in couple days.
The entrepreneur stated he has always been passionate about peer-to-peer technologies, and started his career in the financial sector as a grid computing python applications specialist. He worked as a software consultant and a python expert at prominent financial institutions including UBS Investment Bank, J.P. Morgan and French bank Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank.
Bodt said his encounter with lead core Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen in 2011, convinced him to install a Bitcoin client. Since then, Bodt has been an active member of the community and created the Bitcoin meetup event in Paris and participated to the creation of the first Bitcoin community in London. The entrepreneur firmly believes that Bitcoin will become the most important currency in the world:
"The advantage of Bitcoin as a unit of account is that it allows [its users] to stock value without any risk from actions of others; whereas Euros which requires [people] to be confident in the financial and political European system, as well as in the European Central Bank. [...] I am convinced with Bitcoin's upcoming success, as well as its potential in becoming, in the future, the most important currency in the world."
CoinPlus recently joined Technoport, a state-owned technology-oriented business incubator based in Esch-Belval. Founded in June 2012, Technoport Ltd. is a merge between technology-oriented business incubator Technoport and business support infrastructures Ecostart 1 and 2. The company's main mission is to help entrepreneurs and teams to bridge their ideas to success. Its activity is split in 3 platforms: a business incubator, a coworking space and a fab lab.
Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe bordered by Belgium, Germany and France. Its economy is largely dependent on the banking, steel and industrial sectors. The country is often qualified as a financial Eldorado as it features a high-income market economy with low inflation and a high level of innovation. In 2011, the IMF reported Luxembourg as the second richest country in the world by GDP per capita.
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