Liquid Hits Unicorn Status With Over $1 Billion Valuation
Liquid, a Japanese crypto trading platform has hit unicorn status after the first close of an ongoing Series C funding that puts the company valuation at over $1 billion.
Quoine, Liquid’s parent company is a global fintech company licensed by Japan’s Financial Services Agency.
The fresh funding and new valuation makes Liquid the country’s second unicorn in the tech startup space the other is Preferred Networks, which is backed by Fanuc, Hitachi, Toyota and others.
The first close of Liquid’s Series C has reportedly been led by American investment firm IDG Capital, with participation of major Chinese crypto mining manufacturer Bitmain Technologies.
IDG has previously invested in other major crypto industry players such as Coinbase, Ripple, Kakao’s crypto unit and Bitmain itself. Bitmain’s participation reportedly marks its second backing of a regulated digital assets trading platform following its contribution to a Series B round for crypto and derivatives exchange ErisX in December 2018.
Representative director & head of Quoine’s CEO office, Katsuya Konno said that the new funding will be used to fuel global expansion, product development of the core trading exchange business and entrance into the security token market.