Bitmain Spinoff Matrixport Achieves Unicorn Status After Series C Round

With its latest Series C investment round, crypto-finance venture Matrixport is now valued at over $1 billion.

The Singapore-based startup raised over $100 million during the round, with another tranche expected, according to CEO Ge Yuesheng. DST Global, C Ventures, and K3 Ventures led the Series C funding round, but other backers include IDG Capital and Dragonfly Capital.

Crypto finance

Ge highlighted how “crypto banking is still a fast-growing niche when compared to wallets and exchanges.” He added that Matrixport’s clients are mostly high net-worth individuals with a wide range of expectations for risk and return. The startup took in between $7 million and $8 million in revenue for 2019. Ge said he expects that to more than double in 2020. 

Matrixport is just one among a handful of fledgling startups offering crypto financial services and structured products to institutional and retail customers. By March, the firm had held over $10 billion of client assets under management and custody. Within five years, the company hopes to raise that figure into the hundreds of billions. By then, after at least three years, it also aims to go public to offer investors an exit, said Ge.

Bitmain spinoff

Matrixport could be considered a spinoff of Bitmain as Wu founded the company after leaving Bitmain earlier this year. In January, Wu resigned as chairman and CEO of the company he had co-founded seven years prior. This ended a year’s-long power struggle with co-founder Micree Zhan. 

In the settlement, Wu stepped down from his position to make way for his fellow co-founder. Zhan then agreed to purchase $600 million worth of Bitmain shares, which represented just over half of the total. The agreement marks the end of a multi-year dispute which saw both co-founders battle each other for power in the company. Some in the mining community argued that this power struggle caused the company to fall behind slightly in its competitiveness.

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