Photo: Liquid / Medium
As it has been announced, Liquid.com, a global cryptocurrency platform, has managed to become the latest crypto unicorn.
The first close of the platform’s ongoing Series C funding is marked by the valuation of over $1 billion. Such an achievement has made the company owned by Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Quoine the second startup in Japan that has managed to deserve the status of a unicorn.
It means that the company needed less than five years to do it, as it was founded in 2014.
Though it is known that in this funding round the company has been backed by Bitmain and IDG Capital, the exact amounts that were invested by both entities are not disclosed. But it’s not a secret that the round was led by IDG Capital.
For IDG this investment means an update of its crypto investments portfolio that currently includes such prominent names as Coinbase, Ripple, Bitmain and Kakao’s crypto unit.
Their decision to support Liquid, Young Guo, the General Partner of IDG Capital, explained the following way:
“IDG has been actively investing in the global crypto space since 2012, identifying some key players early. We came to realize that Tokyo has emerged as a top destination for crypto innovation and it is our honor to back such visionary pioneers as Liquid Co-founders Mike Kayamori and Mario Gomez Lozada to carry out this innovation.”
Liquid’s Development
As for the allocation of the received funds, it is believed that Liquid will use them to continue its further expansion and to push its way towards the security token market.
Speaking about such great results of the funding round, Mike Kayamori, Liquid CEO, noted:
“As we enter into a new age of digital disruption in financial services, consumers are increasingly placing a higher value on digital assets and technologies they can trust and use with greater ease. 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.”
He further added:
“This first round of Series C funding from our two highly respected investors, IDG Capital and Bitmain, puts us in an incredibly strong position to make a global impact in 2019.”
It’s not the first time when Liquid has managed to attract the attention of investors. Previously, it has already raised an impressive sum of more than $20 million from venture investors. The list of these investors includes leading Japanese investment firms JAFCO, SBI, B Dash Ventures, Mistletoe, and ULS Group.
Moreover, Liquid is known for holding the first regulated ICO in Japan. It happened in 2017 and a pre-discounted ICO brought the company more than $100 million.
All this support alongside the company’s huge efforts made Liquid the world’s largest crypto-fiat platform by transaction volume regulated in Japan. Now it offers trading services for top cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum and as for fiat options available, they are Japanese yen, US, Singapore and Australian dollar, and Euro.
Bitcoin CFD Product
But it is not all the good news coming from Liquid, as the company has rolled out its own leveraged BTC contract-for-difference (CFD) product. This new product is called Liquid Infinity and its main aim is to enable traders to speculate on the price changes of BTC against the Japanese yen and US dollar.
It is said that with such option traders will get an opportunity to leverage their positions up to 100x. Liquid Infinity is already available to practically all Liquid customers but Japanese residents do not have access to this product.
