A Polish company, InPay S.A., has become the first company in the world that is selling its shares in exchange of Bitcoin

The sale has just launched on the equity crowdfunding site Beesfund.com. This is an attempt to get equity crowdfunding raising capital thanks to the online community.

The press release from the organization says that unlike the reward-based crowdfunding, made popular by sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo or RocketHub, in equity crowdfunding people who are involved in financing the company receive personal shares. Thus, according to the company this is the best option for it.

Nonetheless, InPay S.A. had enabled the purchase of shares through Bitcoin and thus, became the first company to do so. The company says that this solution is proposed as a first by the Polish equity crowdfunding site Beesfund.com which is able to offer the purchase of equity from companies looking to raise capital.

Two out of the ten largest Bitcoin exchanges in Europe are Polish.

Krzysztof Piech, PhD, Warsaw School of Economics: “Indeed Poland has the opportunity to become a regional European leader in terms of solutions based on the Bitcoin protocol. Poland is able to take advantage of this competitive edge.”

Michał Kisiel, PhD, Economic University in Wroclaw: "Up till now payment innovations have been met with much demand on the Polish market. This is also the case with Bitcoin, whose applications don’t need to be limited to e-commerce. Combining digital currency with the social model of raising funds is an interesting experiment and a step towards a 'capital market 2.0,' which is decentralized and has low transaction costs."

Arkadiusz Osiak, chairman of the board of InPay S.A.: “In the world as a whole, mainly in the US around 60 venture capital investments have been made in companies linked to Bitcoin. The most recent examples, in Blockchain or Bitfury, have reached 30-40 million dollars. The subject of Bitcoin in both the USA and UK is taken more seriously than in Poland.”

Lech Wilczyński, CEO, co-founder, InPay S.A.: “Most people perceive Bitcoin only through the lens of its dynamically changing price, but it is a specific need, not a problem. Bitcoin protocol allows to provide quick and free flow of payment funds for company owners from buyer to seller, regardless of their location.”