Celo Raised $20M That Will Expand The Reach Of Its Valora App

Celo raised $20M in sales of its native token to venture funds with the hope to expand its reach and to debut its new Valora app that is a direct competitor to Venmo so let’s read more in today’s crypto news.

The blockchain ecosystem that is optimized for mobile phones-Celo raised $20M recently that it hopes will help the platform expand its reach. Investors are not only purchasing BTC but they are getting their hands on smaller-cap cryptocurrencies as well. Today, the blockchain platform Celo announced it had raised $20 million from selling its native CELO token to venture companies like Greenfield One, Electric Capital, and Andreesen Horowitz. The funds will help the platform provide developer grants and also build on the blockchain with new products and apps like Valora that was launched today.

.@marek_ dives into why Celo is the best platform to build decentralized mobile applications. https://t.co/YDa6oudA78

— Celo (@CeloOrg) February 9, 2021

Celo is a competitor to Facebook’s Diem as well with the grand vision being financial inclusion on a global scale by means of a proof of stake blockchain. The developers can build mobile-based apps on the blockchain and the ecosystem will incorporate a native asset as well as a stablecoin. Katie Haun, the general partner at Andreessen Horowitz said:

 “When we first began supporting Celo two years ago, we saw the opportunity to build a ‘full stack’ global payments platform that anyone with a smartphone could use to send, receive, and store money. It can dramatically reduce fees and fraud while also making payments instantaneous and global.”

With the Valora app, the fees run as low as $0.01 and the reports show that the payments app that was running in Beta was already used by users in more than 100 countries to facilitate near-instantaneous transactions with the cUSD stablecoin. It’s quite similar to Venmo but permissionless. Celo’s Marek Olszewski said:

“We’re seeing that play out now with 28,000 people who, really in the last month, started signing up for Valora, and transacting with each other and, more importantly transacting with merchants, who now are increasingly accepting it places like Brazil and the Philippines.

Any modern proof-of-stake network that has launched in the last year or two has to have a very scalable protocol, so that you can actually accomplish really high throughput, which then translates to lower fees for everyone. So Celo has that.”