Lolli, the Bitcoin rewards company, has gone to raise $5 million from a cast of famous investors.
Announced yesterday, the Lolli pre-series A round features the likes of Serena Ventures (by Serena Williams), Seven Seven Six (by her husband, Alexis Ohanian), and the Night Media (by MrBeast). Other names on the list are Casey Neistat, Cody Ko, Noel Miller, Phil DeFranco, Gabriel Leydon, and Ian Borthwick.
In 2020, Lolli had raised a $3 million seed round, which was led by PathFinder; other important names were Digital Currency Group, Michelle Phan, and Ashton Kutcher.
Bitcoin is experiencing a bull run, which means that many companies are interested. Lolli now has more than 1,000 merchants and 250,000 users. The company works on incentivizing shoppers to go to its partner stores with Bitcoin rewards which are sent to a wallet.
Alex Adelman, the co-founder of Lolli, has declared that the firm now has an average of 7% bitcoin-back rewards at several important retailers, such as Microsoft, Booking.com, Kroger, and Ulta. To date, Lolli users have gone to win over $3 million in Bitcoin rewards.
“We started out with the idea of educating people about bitcoin. So we just attached it to something that everybody does: shop. People think about investing when they think about bitcoin, but there’s probably less than 1% of the world that would consider themselves investors. Everybody would consider themselves a shopper,” revealed Adelman.
The goal of the company is financial empowerment but also financial inclusion, which, according to Adelman, are the reasons why Serena Williams and her team have gotten involved with it.
“I’m excited to announce my investment in Lolli, a company on a mission to make bitcoin more accessible,” Williams revealed in a statement. “Earning and owning bitcoin is a step towards financial inclusivity for all people.”