Electronics giant Bosch invests in the IOTA cryptocurrency

Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC), the venture capital arm of electronics multinational Bosch, is taking a bet on crypto by investing in tokens from the IOTA Foundation, an open-source non-profit foundation building distributed ledger technology. No figures have been disclosed.

IOTA is developing a distributed ledger for the internet of things that allows machines to transfer data and money securely. According to the company, more than $10 billion has been transacted on the decentralised marketplace. IOTA tokens are the platform’s dedicated cryptocurrency.

Neither RBVC or IOTA are disclosing how much the investment is or how many tokens the VC has purchased. The tokens are currently worth around $4 a piece, according to the latest data from Coinmarketcap. This is RBVC’s first token investment.

The Germany-based foundation hopes the investment will garner greater attention for IOTA’s token and help build relationships with Bosch’s global partners. As part of the deal, Dr Hongquan Jiang, a partner at RBVC, will join the foundation’s advisory board.

“We have been working with the IOTA team for more than one year,” said Dr Hongquan Jiang. “I’m very excited about IOTA’s innovative tangle technology, which could potentially become the standard underlying technology for trustless machine to machine communication, security and payment in the IoT space.”

“Distributed ledgers are the future when it comes to truly unleashing the internet of things, and with IOTA we see the potential of becoming the backbone of this emerging machine economy,” added Dominik Schiener, cofounder of IOTA. “We will continue to intensify our collaboration with leading IoT companies and hope to have the first go-to-market solutions ready by the end of 2018.”