Liquid.com Becomes the Latest Crypto Unicorn Backed by Bitmain and IDG Capital

By Kapil Gauhar

Liquid.com, one of the leading cryptocurrency trading platform, has been backed by Bitmain and IDG Capital in a funding round that makes it the latest, in the industry, crypto unicorn.

The trading firm that is owned by Quoine, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Wednesday that its “over $1 billion” valuation with the closing of the Series C round makes it “one of the only two tech unicorns in Japan’s startup space.”

However, Liquid.com did not reveal the amount invested by Bitmain and IDG Capital, the former of which led the round.

The funds will be placed toward global expansion as well as product development, and to support a move into the security token market, it said.

According to Mike Kayamori, the CEO of Liquid.com,

“Our vision is to make financial services accessible to all, which means bringing more people into the digital asset space so that anyone can be a part of it.”

Quoine launched the Liquid.com platform back last year in September to offer users the access to a “worldwide network of crypto exchanges.”

Liquid expressed that it had previously raised more than $20 million from project capital firms, including SBI, JAFCO, ULS Group and B Dash Ventures. While 2017, the platform said that it had raised more than $100 million in “pre-discounted” and “regulated” ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

Jihan Wu, the co-founder of Bitmain, said –

“Japan is one of the leading nations in putting cryptocurrency industry under proper regulations, and Liquid Group has proven itself to be the exemplary player within such compliant rules.”

IDG Capital is an investor in Ripple, Circle and Coinbase, as well as other cryptocurrency startups including imToken and KuCoin.

Bitmain has also invested in Circle, where the other portfolio firms include derivatives and digital asset trading platform EOS and ErisX developer Block.One.