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Press Release: Thursday, February 25 2021, 12:00 CAT | Source: NFTfi

NFTfi today announced an investment of $890,000 from a group of leading investors in the NFT space. NFTfi is a simple peer to peer marketplace for NFT collateralised loans. The platform allows users to use their NFT assets as collateral for a loan, or offer loans to other users on their non-fungible tokens. Since its public beta launch in June 2020, NFTfi has facilitated more than $1.5 million dollars in loans. 

The $890,000 round includes investment from top VC firms with extensive experience in the NFT and DeFi space including; CoinFund, 1KX, Collab+Currency, Maven 11 and The LAO. Animoca Brands also participated in the round as a strategic investor. The remainder of the round included a number of the leading builders and collectors in the NFT space including Roham Gharegozlou (CEO of Dapper Labs, the creators of NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties) and Sebastien Borget (COO of The Sandbox game), among others

NFTfi will use the funding to expand the capabilities of the platform, add support for additional blockchains like Flow, as well as to fund the development of a governance token to enable community ownership in the platform. 

Jake Brukhman, founder and Managing Partner at CoinFund, said that “NFTfi is at the forefront of a trend that is poised to take the NFT space, and broader blockchain adoption, by storm. They are one of the first companies working on the financialization of NFTs,” Brukhman continued, “in particular NFT-based collateral for loans and resulting price discovery. NFTfi’s work further underscores that NFTs is an up and coming financial asset class.”

Founder of NFTfi and experienced blockchain developer Stephen Young stated that NFTs are a foundational building block of the emerging virtual economy. Making digital items truly ownable for the first time unlocks a world of possibilities that we are only just beginning to explore. With this investment, and more importantly, the phenomenal people who are backing us, we will be at the forefront of the financialisation of NFTs.”

LAO member James Brodie was quick to bring up DeFi maestro Andre Cronje, remarking that Cronje recently stated that “NFTs are DB schemas, they allow foreign keys, and allow cross table lookups, joins, etc.” Brodie went onto say that NFTs are capable of so much, and can b e used as primitives for new and exotic financial instruments.

The market for lending against assets like art and real estate is in the trillions of dollars in traditional finance, as noted by Collab+Currency Partner Stephen McKeon, who was quoted as saying that “NFTfi is leading the charge in mapping lending products to the crypto-equivalents within the NFT space.”

Users interested in finding more about NFTfi can visit their website, Twitter, or Discord.

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This article is a Press Release received from NFTfi. Global Crypto did not receive any form of compensation for its publication, and as this material is deemed newsworthy for the Southern African blockchain industry, it was thus published accordingly.

Feature image by Chau Nguyen from Pixabay 

Andrew is a law student currently studying at UNISA, and Global Crypto's in-house reporter. Andrew discovered blockchain in his final year of school and since developed a keen interest in the subject. He appreciates a good cup of coffee. When he is not too busy with work or studies, he enjoys playing a good round of golf.