Social investment network operator eToro this morning announced that it has closed a funding round of $8.3 million from Spark Capital, Social Leverage and existing investors.

The money will be used to fuel international growth and further enhancement of eToro’s social trading platform. The platform basically enables investors to see, follow and copy the actions of other investors in real time.

Currently, eToro’s online investment network boasts 1.5 million users in over 130 countries.

What is eToro? It’s commodity, currency and index trading made fun and social. Yes, you read that correctly. eToro puts the sexy into silver trading. Users make trades via a ridiculously easy (maybe too easy) interface. Start off with fake money and see what you’re made of. Yesterday, for example, I quickly lost about 5% of my fake capital on foolhardy and highly leveraged oil and silver trades when I lost my nerve and bailed out a few minutes after jumping in. Maybe when I abandon my day job and start trading full time I’ll learn to do a little research first.

But I can’t deny that it’s a total blast to use eToro. The service makes buying and selling extremely easy to understand, and users seem to agree. CEO Jonathan Assia tells me that users have traded over $100 billion on eToro to date. The average transaction size, before leverage, is $50. Trades made on the site are public for others to view, and successful traders can get quite a following on the service.

If you forget for a minute that you’re using real money and actually buying and selling stuff you might think you’re in the middle of an online game. In fact, Howard Lindzon, the founder of new investor Social Leverage, calls eToro “Zynga for real men,” referring to the fact that there’s actual money being made and lost while you’re playing the “game.”

Lindzon’s interest is worth noting. The eToro model is much like Lindzon’s StockTwits, which shows stock buys and sells in a Twitter-like stream. Assia won’t comment on whether a partnership with StockTwits is coming, but it isn’t hard to bet that some sort of strategic relationship is coming.

The company, which has 1.5 million registered users, has 120 employees in Israel, New York, Australia and Cyprus.

Online financial trading platform eToro has secured $6.3 million in Series B financing from BRM Group, Cubit Investments and other unnamed investors. In 2007, the Cyprus-based startup raised $1.7 million in Series A funding from Cubit Investments, Chemi Peres, and other investors.

The financial trading company, which launched originally as an online foreign exchange trading platform, is small but growing with an average of 2,000 new accounts opened every month. eToro is also announcing the addition of commodities trading for its users as well as significant additions to its trading methods which will allow traders to conduct more long-term, lower-leveraged trades in both the forex and commodities markets. Jonathan Assia, eToro’s founder and CEO says that the funding will be used to hire additional staff to keep up with demand and it will allow the company to further extend its current platform into the commodities and stock index markets over the next two years.

As we noted in the past, eToro’s trading platform is attractive because it provides basic tools for less experienced traders to easily conduct online trading via a simple user interface. eToro’s interface provides six different “trading arenas” for traders ranging from beginners to experienced traders. It might not seem like the best time for financial startups, but remember: traders thrive in volatile markets. By making it easier to trade, eToro is hoping it will too.

Israeli eToro is taking a novel approach in simplifying Foreign Exchange (Forex) trading by packaging the complicated concepts involved in trading one currency against another, in fun non-threatening wrappers.

Just how big is Forex trading? Try an estimated $3.2 trillion in daily turnover—that’s ~35 times the average turnover of the NYSE. However, unlike stock trading which has been generally adopted by the mainstream, Forex trading to date has been mostly marginalized to professional traders. eToro wants to change all that.

I spoke to eToro’s CEO, Johnathan Assia, who explained that the real challenge for eToro is finding ways to present Forex data in a simplified and user-friendly manner that makes it accessible to ordinary users. To appreciate the challenge, take a look at the screenshot on the right depicting a typical Forex trading app interface. Now take a look at the screenshots below of eToro’s offering. Talk about a picture being worth a 1000 US Dollars Vs. the Japanese Yen…

Requiring a client download, eToro lets users practice play, or deposit funds for real money trading. The currencies available to trade are the US Dollar, British Pound, Australian Dollar, the Euro and the Japanese Yen. This is where it gets fun… There are four games to choose from:

• Forex Marathon – You pick the currency you think will go up and have it compete in a foot race against the currencies you think will go down.
  
• Dollar Trend – Race the US Dollar against other currencies, choosing whether it will rise or fall.
• Globe Trader – Manage your Forex trading portfolio by forging relations with other currencies on the map of the world.
• Forex Match – Choose the currency you think will go up and have it go one-on-one in a tug of rope against a currency you think will go down.
  

I was supplied with a real money account by eToro and managed to lose $17 in an hour’s-worth of play =(

When a user registers for a real money account, that account is actually opened at one of two foreign exchange trading brokers, RetailFX or IFX Markets. eToro decides which broker based on where it expects to make the most commissions on trades the user makes.

The one thing I found odd about eToro is its rigid insistence on the lack of parallels when comparing it to online gaming operators. This is a rather naïve point-of-view for several reasons: First, one of the company’s co-founders and its CTO is David Ring who was a key R&D leader at Israeli-based 888.com (a major online casino and poker room operator). Second, eToro’s client application is strikingly similar to gambling apps, and this cannot be a pure coincidence. Third, eToro is a BVI company, (a.k.a., a British Virgin Islands company)—classic tax strategy by gambling operators. Fourth, the company’s affiliate marketing offering is extremely reminiscent of gaming operators, “Receive 25% of eToro’s Revenues or Get $2 per every free registered user.”

It’s important to note that will all the similarities, eToro is in fact not a gaming operator. Forex trading is not considered gambling and therefore does not fall under the scope of H.R. 4777, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act.

In January 2007 eToro raised a first round of financing to the tune of $1.7M from by private investors. In an interesting side note, one of these investors is Chemi Peres, who heads Pitango Venture Capital and also happens to be the son of statesman and current president of Israel, Shimon Peres.