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Overstock Invests In PeerNova; $19 million Raised For Blockchain-Based Applications

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:43 PM
Lester Coleman
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:43 PM

Overstock.com, the online retailer, has invested in PeerNova, Inc., an innovator of distributed trustless systems based on blockchain technologies, to complete the second tranche of its Series A financing. To date, San Jose, CA-based PeerNova has raised $19 million in equity and debt financing.

peernova

PeerNova intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of two core enterprise products focused on data security and financial applications and to build product and business development teams. The company previously provided a bitcoin mining and transaction processing system that was designed to scale and deliver 1 PH/s and beyond.

Dr. Naveed Sherwani, president and CEO of PeerNova, told CCN.com that blockchain technology has a lot of potential to securitize data and will have numerous applications, including many beyond digital currency. “It is a very meaningful way to keep records,” he said of blockchain technology. “There is more and more need for things (data records) that can’t change.”

Asset registration/securitization

The first application PeerNova is working on will support the registration or securitization of data assets.

“You will have absolute proof of the existence of this thing (data as it existed) in the past.”

The application will make it possible to track complex data elements.

“It is a new idea – to preserve data forever,” Sherwani explained.

“In the blockchain, once the block is written, once you change anything, it will upset the entire blockchain. Every new block maintains the history of that blockchain in a certain way. We didn’t have a data structure like this before.”

PeerNova is also working to improve transparency in asset transactions. Sherwani referred to it as an exchange application. “It will bring a lot of cleanliness to the world of transfers,” he said. This application will have uses for currencies, he said, but many other assets as well.

While PeerNova is no longer providing a bitcoin mining and transaction processing system, the new applications could have use for digital currency and e-commerce.

Digitization of fiat currency

Asked what he sees as the most important change taking place in digital currency, Sherwani cited the digitization of fiat currency. In the future, governments and individuals will think of money as a digital asset. The undeveloped countries are already leading this change, he said, since more people have mobile phones than traditional bank accounts. He pointed to Kenya, where a quarter of the money used is digital.

“It (the digitization of fiat currency) is spreading like wildfire right now,” he said.

Also read: PeerNova Raises $8.6 Million To Utilize Blockchain In Applications

Overstock.com impressed

20130904 Patrick outside“PeerNova’s team and depth of knowledge in this space impressed the Overstock team,” said Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com. “With our knowledge of PeerNova’s projects and Overstock’s suspicion of society’s reliance on centralized systems, we believe that this collaboration forms a win-win. I believe such crypto technologies will solve many social problems that flow from our society’s reliance on centralized systems.”

“This investment is a result of the meaningful progress that PeerNova is making in its efforts to bring blockchain-based applications to the enterprise at scale,” Sherwani said of Overstock.com.

“We are elated to have Overstock, an early adopter of crypto currency, participate in this strategic funding round. We look forward to further potential collaborative opportunities that may become available.”