On Friday (January 25th), Breadwinner AG (“BRD”), the venture-backed Zurich-headquartered company behind the highly popular mobile cryptocurrency wallet BRD announced that it had raised $15 million in a series B fundraising round, with the funds coming from digital asset venture investment company SBI Crypto Investment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based SBI Holdings.

BRD, which was founded in 2015 by Aaron Voisine and Adam Traidman, develops the mobile cryptocurrent wallet BRD (formerly known as “Bread”), which is available for both iOS and Android, with users in over 170 countries.

According to Techcrunch, in 2018, BRD, which as its own token of the same name, raised $32 million by running “a $12 million presale and a $20 million crowd sale, resulting in a combine Seed and A round that would make most fintech orgs blush.” Aaron Voisine, who is currently the President of the company, told Techcrunch back in May 2018:

We’ve made our name around security, first and foremost. That’s what most the miners and dev crowd know us for, as the most secure way to hold and protect all their cryptoassets. The assets themselves are not stored in any centralized system within BRD. A transaction on BRD connects directly to the blockchain and are synced in real-time. There is literally nothing to steal from BRD, since we’re not holding a single asset ourselves… even though we have over $6B USD under protection.”

 BRD says that this latest round of fundraising will allow it “to scale its product and engineering teams to meet with the growing demands of consumers in Japan and across Asia.” Per the press released shared with CryptoGlobe, CEO Adam Traidman had this to say:

“SBI Group’s investment in BRD allows us to firmly cement ourselves in the Asian market. It shows incredible support for the foundation that we have built in North America and reinforces our proven ability to scale the success we have achieved in the past 4 years. The new investment will ensure our long-term global growth, and we are incredibly excited about collaborating with SBI as a strategic investor and business partner to make that happen.”

Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, President & CEO of SBI Holdings Inc., said:

“The SBI Group has been enhancing investments and partnerships with blockchain-related companies across the world. The partnership with BRD would accelerate our development of financial services utilizing blockchain / DLT, leading to fintech services that are highly beneficial and efficient for our customers.”

Despite falling cryptocurrency prices in 2018, BRD “experienced a record year in new user growth and popularity of its mobile apps”:

  • “116% Y-o-Y growth of total installed base; now over 1.8M users globally”
  • “Q4 2018 was a record Quarter for new user growth; nearly 400K new users in Q4”

Featured Image Courtesy of Breadwinner AG