Bitcoin Blockchain financial platform startup Mirror (Vaurum Labs, Inc.) has raised $8.8 million Series A in a round led by Route 66 that included existing investors Battery Ventures, Crosslink Capital, RRE Ventures, and Tim Draper.

As part of the deal, Route 66 partner Pascal Bouvier will join Mirror’s board of directors.

Originally founded as a Bitcoin exchange called Vaurum, Mirror shifted its focus in late 2014 towards fintech, specifically applying the Blockchain to financial markets.

The company is building a smart contracts platform that enables peer-to-peer trading, using Bitcoin, to “democratize access to financial markets.”

Mirror leverages Blockchain technology to allow individuals and businesses to create and exchange financial contracts, delivering a decentralized market that enables new ways to hedge economic and business risks at what the company claims is a fraction of the normal cost.

The company says that the invention of the Blockchain “will catalyze dramatic changes in financial services” and that their application of it will “solve problems in ways that have never been possible.”

“There is an unbundling of the financial services industry that’s occurring right now, and we see an enormous opportunity to provide advanced, more efficient services for risk management and hedging” Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mirror Avish Bhama said in a statement. “We’re building tools for traditional financial assets, leveraging the Bitcoin protocol.”

Regulatory issues

The application of the Blockchain as a ledger to track peer-to-peer financial transactions is a clever one, but its application does present possible regulatory issues depending on the type of financial instruments being traded.

While financial markets regulation has become a touch more liberal in the United States in recent years, such as the rise of crowdsourced equity funding and the dropping (in part) of the need for investors to be qualified, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will no doubt take more than a passing interest in what Mirror is planning to offer, let along other startups that are starting to emerge in this space.

Regulatory issues aside Mirror, along with the likes of Ripple Labs, Inc. (of note Route 66 is an investor in both companies) applying the Blockchain to financial markets is seemingly where much of the fintech sector is heading currently, and rightfully so given the advantages it holds over traditional ledger systems.

Including the new round Mirror has raised $12.8 million to-date.

The company said it would use the new round to build out its engineering team while scaling its international operations.

Image credit: btckeychain/Flickr/CC by 2.0