Just stumbled across this news announcement. Looks pretty exciting. The entirety of it can be read below:

The blockchain investment company establishes major joint venture to bring funding to startups building on Steem.

Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. has announced a non-binding agreement to create a joint venture with Steemit Inc, to establish a $20m Steem Fund.

The Steem Fund is a venture capital fund for startups building solutions on the Steem blockchain to expand the decentralized social media ecosystem.

Investments from the Steem Fund will be comprised of both Steem tokens tradeable on liquid exchanges and through traditional US dollar investments.

The Steem Fund will be architected to support the accelerated development of applications based on Steem's Smart Media Token (SMT) protocol, allowing native tokens based on the Steem blockchain, said a statement.

SMTs are a technology that allows individual organisations and companies to integrate a customisable and intelligent token system into their website, portal, or platform, it said.

Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. CEO Rik Willard said: 

"We're proud to be the first publically traded company to make a significant investment in the Steem ecosystem. No current open source and public blockchain protocol is more mature, scalable, and as rapid as Steem."

We are convinced that traditional media companies from every corner will find that Steem's technology will be a better way to monetize and distribute existing content and future works."

CEO of Steemit Ned Scott said:

"Today's announcement makes the future for Steem brighter than ever. The Steem Blockchain is faster and already larger than the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains combined, and working with Global Blockchain Technologies Corp. is going to exponentially increase the number of applications built on Steem in an accelerated amount of time."

Steem's Smart Media Token (SMT) protocol is native to the Steem Blockchain. SMTs can be run by any publisher without changing any website infrastructure or functions, breaking down barriers to enter the fastest growing industry in fintech, while creating a mutually beneficial bridge between consumers, content, and media revenue.

Global Blockchain and Steemit will jointly determine the ticket size and distribution of all investments, currently planned for full deployment by 2020.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/global-blockchain-technologies-announces-20m-fund-invest-steem-smts-1647127

http://paymentsjournal.com/global-blockchain-technologies-corp-announces-20m-fund-invest-steem-smts/

I am a bit surprised I haven't seen anyone talking about this yet, but if it's legit it sounds pretty exciting to me!

*Update: Ned tweeted the PR, which means the news is legit. Pretty exciting indeed!

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