Tangem[1], a Swiss manufacturer of crypto “smart banknotes,” has raised US$15 million from SBI Crypto Investment, a digital asset venture investment company wholly owned by SBI Holdings.
Operating out of Switzerland and Singapore, Tangem develops smart cards called Tangem Notes that carry a fixed amount of cryptocurrency. Tangem Notes are embedded with a S3D350A chip from Samsung Semiconductor and equipped with a NFC antenna. The company provides accompanying Android and iOS apps which allow users to verify the authenticity and value of Tangem Notes via NFC.
Tangem Notes strive to be the easiest and safest way to acquire, secure and transfer cryptocurrencies.
“The Tangem hardware wallet, which is highly secure and affordable, is an important tool to promote mass adoption of digital assets and blockchain,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, President & CEO of SBI Holdings Inc. “We believe utilizing Tangem will help stipulate the demand for other blockchain services provided by SBI.”
Technically, every Tangem Note is a separate hardware cold wallet that is fixed to a certain cryptocurrency and can hold one private key at a time. But unlike traditional hardware cryptocurrency wallets like Ledger and Trezor that are optimized for digital transactions, Tangem Notes are optimized for physical transactions and are designed to be fully trusted even when received from untrusted sources, according[2] to the company’s FAQ.
The capital injection from SBI Crypto Investment will be used to accelerate the deployment of Tandem’s technology in other industries where the secure storage and circulation of blockchain assets has high potential including stablecoins, initial coin offerings (ICOs), ticketing, anti-counterfeit, digital identity and retail loyalty, the startup said[3] on Monday.
“We take the next big step on our mission to bring blockchain to people’s everyday
