OpenBazaar raises $1 million in venture capital

Read here: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/openbazaar-1-million-seed-funding/

The "next generation of uncensored trade" just made its first million bucks.

OpenBazaar, designed to be an "untouchable" and decentralized Bitcoin marketplace, just announced a $1 million round of seed funding from Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and angel investor William Mougayar. That's a heavyweight team of investors for a project that has been counted among the most subversive on the Net.

OpenBazaar is designed to be a new way to buy and sell things online. Instead of going to a site like Amazon.com, OpenBazaar is a decentralized network that isn't controlled by any single company or organization. No big corporation is always watching and monetizing each sale, no one can easily censor what you're selling, and everyone will be on an equal playing field--at least, that's what the developers hope they'll build with this investment. Right now, the software is still in beta.

The investment goes to OB1, the newly formed company headed by CEO Brian Hoffman, previously a cybersecurity and IT consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, who has headed OpenBazaar development from the beginning. OB1's top priority is to provide core developer support to OpenBazaar, Hoffman explained, so they've hired a team of six full-time employees (including Hoffman) with the new-found cash.

Read more here...


Comments


[15 Points] None:

Does OpenBazaar still require a merchant to have the client running at all times?


[12 Points] uktruffles:

Booz Allen? That's a red light


[13 Points] boozallenissatan:

The investment goes to OB1, the newly formed company headed by CEO Brian Hoffman, previously a cybersecurity and IT consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. (/ˈbuːz ˈælən ˈhæməltən/,[3] informally: Booz Allen[4]) is an American management consulting firm headquartered in Tysons Corner, Fairfax County, Virginia in Greater Washington DC, with 80 other offices throughout the United States. Its core business is the provision of management, technology and security services, to civilian government agencies, as a security and defense contractor[5] to defense and intelligence agencies, and to civil and commercial entities.[6] Their scope of services includes strategic planning, human capital and learning, communications, operational improvement, information technology work, systems engineering, organizational change efforts, computer modeling and simulation, program management, assurance and resilience, and economic business analysis.

Private spies. ^

Edward Snowden also came from Booz Allen, and this Brian Hoffman may have left for similar reasons. I would just be extremely careful. It seems to me that if anonymity were a priority for this project they would have tackled that first. It's almost like this project is a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to privacy.

Edit: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-06-20/booz-allen-the-worlds-most-profitable-spy-organization


[6 Points] Frankeh1:

No big corporation is always watching and monetizing each sale, no one can easily censor what you’re selling, and everyone will be on an equal playing field>

If there's no money to be made why are the fat cats investing?


[2 Points] KrispyKremeDNM:

We are honestly pretty excited to see this come out of beta!


[2 Points] boozallenissatan:

Anyone know where El Presidente is? He/she was doing a lot of work on getting OpenBazaar better at anonymity.


[2 Points] bobbiggs69:

This is good to know but the Daily Dot is such a piece of shit. Every article should be labeled as an editorial. I've never seen so much opinion attempted to be passed off as fact. Their favorite quote seems to be "educate yourself" when referring to their opinions because learning more about their opinions because if you don't agree with them then you're obviously uneducated. Ive never seen so much vanity in reporting which leads me to believe not a one of their "journalists" is over 25.


[1 Points] kahrmine:

Is this viable for our purposes?

I remember reading somewhere that it wouldn't be ideal for vendors/consumers.


[1 Points] youtakesally:

With that money they could make a pretty fucking decent market soon. I can't wait!


[1 Points] SmauqDrogs:

Looks like good news but also looks a lot like honeypot. "Hey this is my new million dollar company, it's not intended for darknet but be my guest to try".


[1 Points] CanIKissYourKitty:

funny thing here, how many of you just plain do not realize that trying to conduct illegal activity on openbazaar is just going to make its legal and legitimate funders pull the funding and back out of it


[1 Points] rogueXleader:

Yay...a $1 million Alibaba