Berlin’s OST invests $5 million in cash and crypto tokens in photo startup Unsplash

OST, the Berlin-based blockchain company founded by Jason Goldberg, is investing $5 million in cash and crypto tokens in photo startup Unsplash.

The OST investment is made up of 80% cash and 20% OST tokens, also known as the Simple Token, which is OST’s dedicated cryptocurrency that’s currently trading at around $0.30.

The round includes other investors – Betaworks, Real Ventures, and InVision CEO Clark Valberg among others – totalling $7.25 million and has not yet closed. It is anticipated to hit $10 million, said Goldberg, who will be joining Unsplash’s board of directors as part of the investment

OST is a company developing blockchain protocols and software that help businesses shift their operations to the blockchain and deploy token-based economies.

Unsplash, based in Montreal, is a portal for free-to-use digital photography that gains around five billion photo views a month. Through the investment, OST wants to “reinvent, decentralize, and democratize photography” by tokenising the billions of photos on Unsplash using the blockchain to adequately reward photographer’s work.

According to OST, this “marks the largest mass market consumer web-service Blockchain tokenization project ever announced” but added that it will be announcing more details on the ins-and-outs and how the partnership will work soon.

“The entire purpose of OST is help mainstream companies benefit from blockchain and we are hopeful that our partnership with Unsplash will prove to be a signature showcase of the power of OST,” said Goldberg. “Together, there is a tremendous opportunity here to deliver one of the first mass-market use cases for blockchain.”