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The round was led by Goldman Sachs Group and IDG Capital partners, an early investor in Chinese Internet giants Tencent and Baidu.
The Boston-based bitcoin startup has just started to allow dollars to be held in accounts in addition to bitcoin. Soon it has plans to provide similar offerings for the Chinese yuan and other currencies.
By using bitcoin, Circle users are not part of a closed loop and are able to send funds outside of the Circle network.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is one of two lead investors in a $50 million funding round for bitcoin startup Circle Internet Financial Ltd. Goldman adds its name to a growing list of Wall Street institutions exploring digital-currency technology’s potential to provide faster and cheaper financial transactions and payments. Circle, based in Boston, uses bitcoin-based systems to allow customers to digitally store money and transfer it to and from other people and merchants. WSJ’s Michael Casey and Paul Vigna discuss the significance of Goldman Sachs’s $50 million investment in a Bitcoin startup. The new $50 million injection comes on top of $26 million in prior financing founds for Circle and, according to people familiar with the deal, values the startup at around $200 million.
