Version One leads seed funding of Ethereum platform Citizen Hex

Citizen Hex Inc, a Toronto-based Ethereum liquidity company, has raised an undisclosed seed-stage financing. The round was led by Version One Ventures and joined by OMERS Ventures, Purpose Investments, League CEO Mike Serbinis and Morgan Stanley Managing Director Laura Adams, among others. Citizen Hex, founded last year by CEO Benjamin Roberts and CTO Brett Bergmann, will focus on acquiring, securing and trading ERC-20 tokens and helping accelerate the ecosystem for Ethereum, a successor to Bitcoin, by increasing liquidity. Version One’s Boris Wertz, who sits on the company’s board, discusses Citizen Hex here.

Photo: Boris Wertz, founder and general partner, Version One Ventures.

PRESS RELEASE

Citizen Hex Inc. Announces Seed Investment to Build ‘Ethereum Liquidity Company’

TORONTO, Canada, May 23, 2017 (Newswire.com) – Citizen Hex Inc. has closed a seed round for an undisclosed sum led by Boris Wertz, founding partner of Version One VC. The round also included a number of Canada’s top angel investors and entrepreneurs including OMERS Ventures, through Managing Director Jim Orlando; Som Seif and Purpose Investments; Mike Serbinis, Founder & CEO League Inc.; and Laura Adams, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley.

Ethereum, a successor to Bitcoin, is a platform for the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications. The price of ETH, the native commodity of the Ethereum blockchain, has risen more than 1,000% in 2017. Other Ethereum protocol tokens such as GNT (Golem Network Token), a commodity for buying and selling decentralized computational capacity, have enjoyed even higher returns.

“The economics of Ethereum will lead to thousands of exchanges, and millions of Ethereum-based tokens,” said Benjamin Roberts, Co-founder & CEO, Citizen Hex.“This represents an unprecedented opportunity to provide smart-contract liquidity-as-a-service and other critical financial infrastructure that can only exist on the public Ethereum blockchain.”

Citizen Hex Inc. was founded by Benjamin Roberts and Brett Bergmann in late 2016 and emerged as one of the top companies in the Toronto-based Creative Destruction Lab accelerator.

“We are very excited to back Ben and Brett,” said Boriz Wertz, Founder, Version One Ventures. “We are big believers that cryptocurrencies are building the foundation for a more decentralized internet and that Citizen Hex will play a crucial role in this ecosystem.”

The company will use the proceeds of the round to build a world-class team of smart-contract programmers. Toronto and Waterloo-based developers are encouraged to apply at angel.co/citizenhex/jobs

ABOUT CITIZEN HEX

Citizen Hex is purpose-built for the Ethereum era: a corporation centred around acquiring, securing, and trading ERC-20 tokens.

For inquiries, please contact:
ben@citizenhex.com

Photo courtesy of Version One Ventures/Kris Krug