$5M was raised in early capital for Baxus, a worldwide marketplace for collectible spirits located in New York City.
Investors
- Multicoin Capital (led the round)
- Solana Ventures
- Narwhal Ventures
- FJ Labs
With the money, the business will expand its sensor and vaulting technology to better serve the retail and institutional markets for collectible spirits.
Under the leadership of CEO Tzvi Wiesel, Baxus is an international marketplace that provides a safe means of trading wine and spirits for collectors and institutions. By using blockchain technology, the system guarantees access and transparency, facilitating real-time trading, storage, and authentication, and adding liquidity to an otherwise illiquid market.
The marketplace, which is based on Solana, uses open Web3 payment infrastructure to save costs, improve transparency, and bring liquidity to an offline industry that has hitherto been fragmented. Users can transact via credit card, ACH, direct wire, cryptocurrency, or USDC.
Collectors who send their bottles to the Vault—a safe, temperature-controlled network of facilities that offers storage and insurance for collectors’ valuable bottles—add inventory to the market.
The high-resolution scans of each bottle are then tokenized, displayed on-chain as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in collectors’ dashboards, enabling them to list and trade immediately for a fraction of the usual costs.
Data on pricing, provenance, and details are firmly affixed to every bottle. Any bottles that are bought from the marketplace or kept in the vault may be redeemed whenever they choose, or they can be kept there to be safely kept or sold at a later time.
Late in 2023, Baxus purchased the collection monitoring and valuation software BoozApp, which gives spirits fans instantaneous bottle appraisals in addition to managing their collection, including purchase costs, tasting notes, and fill levels.
The business intends to incorporate BoozApp’s data and inventory into its marketplace, giving collectors never-before-seen insight into the value and condition of their holdings.