A Seattle startup has raised $6 million from investors, which it plans to use to expand its ongoing venture into digital collectibles.
Loot Labs, which owns and operates the collectibles platform Boxed.gg, raised a $6 million seed round investment to expand its ongoing venture into digital collectibles.
Global venture capital firm BITKRAFT Ventures led the round. The firm previously invested in a $1.5 million round last year.
Boxed.gg has staked out a territory as a gamified online marketplace for collectible cards. Fans of Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering can sign up for Boxed to digitally purchase, draw, and authenticate cards, then have physical merchandise shipped to their door from a fulfillment facility located in the U.S.
Users’ unwanted cards can be traded back to Boxed.gg for site credit, which is used to purchase more cards on the website’s marketplace.
With the newest funding round, Loot Labs intends to expand its business model to include tradable digital collectibles. This will begin with an Oct. 28 beta test that will expand Boxed.gg to allow users to trade for weapon skins in Valve Software’s online tactical shooter Counter-Strike 2. Interested users can sign up for the beta now.
“We are filling a valuable role in expanding and securing the collectibles market with a trusted platform,” said Loot Labs’ CEO Milan Harris in a press release. “The current black market of digital trade leaves money on the table for video game developers and exposes consumers to significant security risks.”
Harris continued, “We envision a future where studios can tap into the digital collectibles market, allowing their teams to benefit from secondary transactions while giving their fans a safe environment to freely collect and trade items in their favorite games.”
When Loot Labs announced its pre-seeding round in May 2023, it initially billed Boxed.gg as a platform for all-virtual “mystery boxes” that, when opened, would yield a variety of digital collectibles like NFTs or unique avatars. However, that focus on NFTs and other Web3 goods isn’t part of the site’s current mission, which is entirely focused on securing and trading physical merchandise.
“Our vision from the beginning for Boxed.gg was to create the ultimate collectibles experience,” Harris tells GeekWire via email. “Our first step was with NFTs and we saw them as the new frontier for collectible assets to be transacted digitally. That space remains nascent, but part of our vision, and we’re still hopeful this digital technology will back some of the next big collectible IPs of our time.”
Harris describes Boxed.gg’s current mission statement as “effectively beginning to bridge the physical and digital collectible markets,” with more to come after its venture into CS2.
https://ift.tt/oZXDJ9Y October 07, 2024 at 01:00PM GeekWire
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