Blue Star Capital (BLU ) said its investee firm SatoshiPay’s smart contract network Pendulum, has raised $5m in an oversubscribed private sale round of the network’s upcoming PEN token.
London-listed Blue Star Capital, which makes investments within the esports, payments, technology sectors, said the funds will be used to continue the development of Pendulum. Blue Star holds an interest in Pendulum through its existing 31% equity interest in SatoshiPay.
SatosihPay’s Pendulum network is an open-source blockchain that aims to establish the missing link between fiat and the DeFi ecosystems through a smart contract network.
Pendulum is being built around two large blockchain ecosystems, Stellar and Polkadot. As such, SatoshiPay said it expects to become involved in an increasing number of opportunities within the decentralised finance space, a market currently estimated at $100 billion.
It is intended that Pendulum will connect DeFi to the foreign exchange market, building automated market makers (AMMs) to introduce scalable liquidity pools for fiat currencies, and create yield earning opportunities for fiat token holders, the Company explained to investors.
SatoshiPay started the development of Pendulum in April 2021 and later, in May 2021, received an R&D grant from the Stellar Development Foundation to advance its development.
The first prototype of Pendulum, which features a bridge to Stellar and AMM, similar to that found in Uniswap, is now available on SatoshiPay's internal Pendulum testnet, Blue noted.
SatoshiPay says it expects that the next stages of development to include a public testnet and mainnet, the introduction of sophisticated smart contracts to the Stellar network while simultaneously adding ‘a set of robust fiat assets’ to the Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem.
Today, in an oversubscribed placing, Pendulum raised $5 million for its further development by the private sale of PEN tokens. The directors of the Company have been advised that the funding allows for SatoshiPay to be contractually retained to continue to develop Pendulum.
Blue Star Capital said it believes the successful token presale and future launch of the Pendulum blockchain is ‘a critical step’ towards SatoshiPay commercialising its core technology, ‘thereby creating a number of advantages for SatoshiPay and its shareholders.’
Pendulum has appointed SatoshiPay to build the Pendulum blockchain, with the contract to be satisfied through a combination of cash and PEN tokens which is expected to generate ‘significant revenues for SatoshiPay for a number of years,’ Blue Star Capital highlighted.
SatoshiPay said it expects that the revenue it derives from Pendulum development should be sufficient to fund itself and significantly reduce any need for the group to raise equity finance.
Commenting, Meinhard Benn, CEO SatoshiPay said: "We are extremely satisfied with the outcome of Pendulum's private token presale. The fact that we were significantly oversubscribed shows us that there is strong demand for our upcoming network and token. New relationships with specialised funds, platforms and protocols formed during the presale will help us to firmly establish the Pendulum network and its PEN token which we aim to develop into major building blocks of the rapidly growing decentralised finance industry."
Commenting on this morning’s news Derek Lew, Blue Star’s Executive Chairman, added: "SatoshiPay has been carried in Blue Star's accounts at a valuation based on the last external fundraising which took place in March 2019. Since then SatoshiPay has launched DTransfer and now Pendulum and the board looks forward to the future for SatoshiPay with optimism and intends to explore how this can be best realised for Blue Star and its shareholders."
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