Gem raises additional $1.3m in funding

Gem, a bitcoin API start-up based out of California, has announced a further $1.3m in funding, raising its total to $3.3m.

The funding was led by KEC Ventures, and included contributions from First Round Capital, early Facebook investor Robert Wolfson and RRE Ventures. The previous round concluded in September last year in which it received funds from Idealab, Mesa Venture, James Joaquin and Brock Pierce's investment firm, Crypto Currency Partners.

A company spokesperson said that the funds would be employed to speed up feature development and scale Gem's services for global developers.

Nearly 40 percent of people using the company's API are from outside the U.S., spread throughout Europe, Asia and South America. The new API tries to simplify integration for this global user base, along with providing improved security measures to safeguard bitcoin wallets and keys.

Ken Miller, COO at Gem, said the security improvements had taken "massive amounts of time and energy to bring to the market" and added "It just was not an area we were willing to compromise."