Circle’s $60M in Chinese funding underscores Chinese bitcoin demand

By June 22, 2016Bitcoin Business

(Photo: Rick Bowmer, AP) It’s not only Chinese retail investors who’ve gone bullish on new digital payment systems and currencies such as bitcoin.

Large firms there are also making sizable investments in the blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin, which hit a two-year high Monday on demand in China, then plunged 10% Tuesday.

A consortium of technology and financial firms in China has made a $60 million investment in the Chinese unit of Circle, a U.S.-based blockchain-payments startup.

The firms include Baidu ( BIDU ), the Chinese search giant; CICC Alpha, a growth-investing unit of the China International Capital Corp.; the private-equity arm of China EverBright Investment Management Ltd.; CreditEase, an online lender owned by Yirendai ( YRD ), a Chinese financial services firm traded in the U.S., and IDG Capital Partners which led the round, according to a draft copy of an upcoming blog post from Circle that I’ve seen.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, who also founded video-advertising startup BrightCove ( BCOV ), which went public in the U.S. last year, and had a previous software company acquired for $360 million, confirmed the investment in a phone interview.

The Circle funding round was led by IDG Capital Partners, one of the first U.S. venture capital firms to invest in China, and also included existing Circle investors Breyer Capital and General Catalyst Partners.

The funding round, Allaire says, like the huge bitcoin trading volumes in China that have come amid stock-market volatility there, shows how the world’s most populous country is well ahead of the U.S. in adopting digital payment systems.

"If you look at the trends, China very well could be the driver of the adoption of block chain consumer services," says Allaire, whose self-named company was acquired by Macromedia in 2001.Digital payment services, such as Alipay (a former unit of Alibaba that’s still used on […]

Leave a Reply

All Today's Crypto News In One Place