Short-term rental website valued at nearly $20 billion may use blockchain technology

One of the founders of popular accommodation rental service AirBnB has hinted at interest in blockchain’s potential use in improving user trust.

This point was made by the company's co-founder and CEO Nathan Blecharczyk in a recent interview discussing the company's plans.

City AM author Harriet Green said the conversation eventually turned to blockchain technology, and Blecharczyk suggested integrating blockchain into the company's services to change the trust mechanism for users.

He told the publication:

“ The variety of different concepts we’re looking at shows that everyone is credible, and I do see some newer ideas that could be incorporated into our service. ”

About Airbnb

Airbnb is the abbreviation of AirBed and Breakfast ("Air-bnb") , and its Chinese name is: 空空食居. 空空食居 is a service website that connects travelers with homeowners who have vacant rooms for rent. It can provide users with a variety of accommodation information. In 2011 , Airbnb service grew an incredible 800% .

Airbnb was founded in August 2008 and is headquartered in San Francisco , California, USA . Airbnb is a travel house rental community where users can post and search for vacation house rental information and complete online reservation procedures through the Internet or mobile applications. Airbnb users are spread across nearly 34,000 cities in 190 countries , and have posted 50,000 house rental information . AirBnB was called " EBay in Housing " by Time Magazine .

On February 28, 2015 , the American short-term rental website Airbnb is conducting a new round of financing, and its valuation will reach 20 billion US dollars.

According to sources, Airbnb plans to raise $ 1 billion, and has already completed half of it. It is reported that Airbnb has attracted investors from Asia and some large private equity groups. The names of these investors cannot be confirmed yet, but one of them will be Fidelity. Airbnb 's previous investors include TPG , T. Rowe Price , Dragoneer , Founders Fund , Sequoia Capital and Russia's DST .