The Hive Project, the first cryptocurrency-based invoicing platform focused on providing liquidity pools for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has announced the successful completion of its token sale, raising USD $8.95 million (BTC 2087) from 2234 global supporters.
The Hive Project tackles barriers to liquidity faced by SMEs by providing an alternative source of liquidity to that offered by traditional financial institutions. While European Commission reports that SMEs represent over 99 percent of businesses in the EU, SMEs in Europe and worldwide struggle to successfully tap into the $3 trillion invoice finance industry to fund operations and growth. Hive provides new liquidity to SMEs, enabling platform participants to purchase micro invoices from trusted companies, turning invoices into tradeable assets.
Hive Project’s end-to-end platform based on the Ethereum Blockchain and smart-contracts dispenses with the obstacles and delays associated with centralised intermediaries. Hive automates previously manual, time-consuming processes such as credit scoring assessments and auditing, while simultaneously giving liquidity providers real-time actionable data including credit-worthiness. Hive also gives every issued invoice a unique fingerprint, providing invoice buyers with assurance that the invoice cannot be sold twice. With open and transparent public data of issuer, owner and payer, invoices can be offered to the market for trading.
“For too long, SME’s have been left out in the cold by traditional lending systems which favor large companies,” said Jure Soklic, co-founder and CEO. “The success of our token sale is testament to market recognition of the need to reshape the invoice finance industry and ease the burdens faced by SMEs worldwide by bridging the liquidity gap, while providing attractive investment opportunities for invoice buyers.”
BTC 1,500 of the funds raised will be devoted solely to the development, marketing and implementation of the platform, and the rest will be set aside for the liquidity pool (HVNX). The HVNX will fuel the growth of the marketplace, thereby hastening the adoption of the Hive platform and generating faster returns for contributors.
The Hive Project, recently awarded first place as the ‘Best ICO’ at CoinAgenda Europe, is in advanced discussions to list HVN on several of the world’s largest exchanges spanning the EU, the US and Asia.