OKCoin, China's largest Bitcoin exchange with an exchange volume of over 100 million USD equivalent in virtual currency transactions per day, has announced the closing of their Series A Round.
The $10 million round, closed in December 2013, was led by Ceyuan, one of China's earliest venture capital firms, followed by Madra Capital, VenturesLab, and numerous high-profile angel investors.
"I have a tremendous amount of confidence in both the future of Bitcoin and the continued growth of OKCoin," said Mr. Feng Bo, founder and partner of Ceyuan. "We are delighted to invest in the pioneer of China's Bitcoin exchanges; given the company's leadership under Star Xu and his team, we know there is much more good news ahead." Ceyuan has invested in numerous successful Chinese technology companies including Qihoo 360 (QIHU), Light in the Box (LITB), UC Web, Xunlei, and VANCL.
"Bitcoin is an innovation which has significant implication for the future of the Internet," said Tim Draper, partner of VenturesLab and legendary Silicon Valley venture investor. In addition to his involvement at VenturesLab, Tim Draper is founder of Silicon Valley venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where he backed numerous successes as Hotmail, Baidu, Skype, and Tesla Motors. Adam Draper, Tim's son, has also echoed this enthusiasm for Bitcoin by establishing Boost VC, a Bitcoin-focused incubator in San Mateo, California. Together the Drapers have invested in numerous Bitcoin companies, such as Coinbase, Coinlab, and Korbit.
"As the regulatory environment in countries and regions such as Singapore, the U.S., and Hong Kong clarifies, it opens up opportunities for us to operate in geographies where we can offer the safety and protection that maximize protection for OKCoin clients," said Mark Mai, VenturesLab's China partner. "The international marketplace offers a fantastic opportunity for OKCoin to bring its excellent trading platform overseas, but we want to do it in way that safeguards the users and their funds. The growth of virtual currency is inevitable, and many countries are coming to terms with the fact that they have to regulate these currencies, because their citizens are using these virtual coins anyway. And that's good news for us. We welcome oversight because that helps us serve our customers better, and allows us to open up regulated bank and trading accounts, and engage third party clearance and settlement. We've already built out the technology for our platform - now we're working with regulators and expanding. The world is waking up to us."
"Our team is passionate about our work, and we are tireless in our pursuit," said Star Xu, CEO of OKCoin. "We are changing the world, and making Bitcoin more accessible. We have assembled a fantastic team of technologists and we are relentless in our attempts to improve the product. We are upgrading our user interface, our systems functionality, our transaction engine, and our security capability all the time. Our user base has responded well to these enhancements, and we now have a daily trade volume of approximately 50,000 Bitcoins per day and 5 million Litecoins. We are proud to say that we now China's largest Bitcoin exchange, with the highest daily transaction volume in the country. And we have had a peak of 300,000 Bitcoins and 13 million Litecoins traded on one particular day."
Mr. Xu indicated that funds from this A series round will be utilized for expansion of the team, product R&D, and even further security enhancements. Additionally, overseas expansion is of high priority for the company.