Digital investment platform Stokr announced two things in the same press release, on 24 October 2024. First, it announced the completion of a €7.4m funding round led by Fulgur Ventures on the eve of the “Plan ₿” Bitcoin event in Lugano, Switzerland. The funding comprises 100 Bitcoin (valued at roughly €6.2m) plus €1.2m in cash.
The money will be used primarily to establish one of Europe’s first corporate Bitcoin treasuries, noted the communiqué. Stokr also aims to bring new Bitcoin-related tokenised assets to market and create the infrastructure for institutions to issue tokenised securities more efficiently on native Bitcoin layer-2 technologies such as the Liquid Network.
The fintech, which is housed at the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (Lhoft), will also strengthen its regulatory position by moving from its current status as a virtual asset service provider to a regulated crypto asset service provider under the new European Mica regulatory framework. The company has taken a number of steps to improve its governance, creating a special executive committee to guide its growth, joined by the likes of Bitcoin pioneer and Blockstream CEO Adam Back and former Kraken executive Raul Oliveira.
Over the past six years, Stokr has facilitated some ‘unusual’ issues in the real-world asset sector, such as Blockstream Mining Note 1 (BMN1) , a tokenised hashrate offering from leading Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream. The first issue matured in July, offering one of the largest payouts in the history of the RWA space at 1,212 BTC, equivalent to $75m or cash-on-cash of up to 103%.
In 2024, Stokr built on the success of MicroStrategy with the launch of MicroStrategy Note (CMSTR) , the first tokenised security in the Bitcoin ecosystem to be backed by shares in a Nasdaq-listed company.
This means a total of more than $110m in buyouts and investments combined in 2024 alone.
This article was originally published in .