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Bitcoin derivatives platform BTC gets funding from Seedcoin

[April 02, 2014]  By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Bitcoin derivatives trading platform BTC.sx has secured funding from Seedcoin Fund, BTC.sx Chief Operating Officer George Samman told Reuters on Tuesday.

Samman has provided BTC.sx around $250,000 in funding, which he said was the largest investment by Seedcoin so far.

"This is part of the funding we're trying to raise and we are very close to landing additional funding," said Samman.

The investment in BTC is the sixth Bitcoin-denominated position from the first SeedCoin fund. The other five businesses are Cryptopay, CoinSimple, MexBT, Hive and zSIM, Seedcoin said in a statement. SeedCoin is a startup "incubator" providing early-stage investment to digital currency companies.

BTC, which started with a $150,000 investment, briefly suspended trading on its platform after its bitcoin exchange partner, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, went dark in February following weeks of turmoil. Mt. Gox eventually filed for bankruptcy protection. Prior to the suspension, BTC offered derivatives on Mt. Gox prices.

Samman said the platform resumed trading on March 10 and now offers derivatives on BitStamp prices. BitStamp is a bitcoin exchange based in Slovenia and is now considered the world's largest based on trading volume.

According to Bitcoin Charts, BitStamp has 30-day U.S. dollar volume of about $290 million.

Derivatives volume has been light since BTC resumed trading, Samman said.

"It has been picking up slightly. We're nowhere near the volumes we have seen before the collapse of Mt. Gox," Samman said. "I think that's just a bitcoin-wide problem at the moment."

BTC has brokered more than $44 million in bitcoin derivative trades since it launched in April 2013.

When Mt. Gox collapsed, BTC lost all of the bitcoins it had stored with the failed exchange. However, even before the Mt. Gox failure, BTC had already started withdrawing funds and reducing its exposure to the exchange because of worries about its future.

(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfus; editing by Andre Grenon)

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