Michael Novogratz’s investment fund Galaxy Digital Capital Management invested $20 million in a virtual reality (VR) platform that leverages the blockchain technology. High Fidelity, as the platform is called, has raised a total of $35 million in the recent funding round, CEO and co-founder Philip Rosedale revealed on Thursday. The other $15 million came from blockchain-focused VC firm Blockchain Capital and investors like Breyer Capital, IDG Capital Partners, and Vulcan Capital.
So far, High Fidelity has managed to raise over $70 million for its VR platform.
Rosedale said in an interview with Reuters:
“The High Fidelity platform is currently in beta, so it has been partly launched.”
“The headsets that will really take us into the big consumer market are not available just yet. A lot of our early focus is on location-based facilities,” he stated.
Philip Rosedale - source: Wikipedia
Rosedale is known as the founder of Second Life, a popular 3D virtual world with social networking elements. Launched in 2003, Second Life has reached about one million active users and has generated over $4 billion in virtual transactions worldwide.
High Fidelity will use the raised money to hire more talents, expand its research and development, and open an office in Seattle, Washington.
Sam Englebardt, Galaxy Digital’s head of strategic partnerships will join High Fidelity’s board. He said:
“Virtual reality may be the first killer app for blockchain. It’s a global phenomenon that fundamentally requires a trustless consensus mechanism for currency, property and identity.”
The VR platform operator revealed that it would create a stable coin known as High Fidelity Coin, which will be used with the system. However, given that it will be backed by the US dollar, it won’t be an investment opportunity.
High Fidelity hopes that in the next ten years the VR market will expand to about 1 billion users and will develop a $1 trillion ecosystem of virtual services and goods. However, as Rosedale puts it, VR must heavily rely on blockchain in order to be decentralized.
In February 2018, Novogratz raised $250 million for his New York-based crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
