HashKey Group, owner of one of Hong Kong’s two licensed cryptocurrency exchanges, raised a $100 million Series A round. It said the funding was at a $1.2 billion valuation without mentioning the investors.
According to a Bloomberg report, OKX Ventures affiliated with the OKX cryptocurrency exchange, is amongst the lead investors. However, so far there’s no confirmation.
A dozen cryptocurrency exchanges have pending applications with Hong Kong’s Securities and Future Commission (SFC), one of which is OKX.
In August last year, the SFC allowed the only two regulated exchanges, HashKey and OSL, to start targeting retail investors. In the first four months HashKey signed up 155,000 clients. During the past 30 days, the average daily trading volume has hit US$630 million.
Meanwhile, competitor OSL’s parent BC Technology Group raised a $91 million funding round last November at a lower valuation. It ceded a 30% stake in the holding company and control of the board. Like OKX, the acquirer BGX was associated crypto exchange license applicant, BitGetX. BitGetX withdrew its application shortly before the announcement, and BGX claimed it is not affiliated with BitGetX – it just has a common shareholder and CEO.
HashKey’s asset management background
Apart from the exchange and brokerage, HashKey has a technology division, including blockchain node management. It started as an investor in Ethereum in 2018 and has a venture arm with more than $1 billion under management. Founder and CEO Dr Xiao Feng has a background in asset management in mainland China and is also Chairman and CEO of Wanxiang Blockchain.
Recently HashKey has made several partnership announcements on the asset management side. For example, in November it signed an MoU with ChinaAMC (HK) and Hamsa to develop technologies for the asset management industry. ChinaAMC has $260 billion in assets under management in Hong Kong. HashKey Exchange is targeting asset managers, and this year it announced blockchain ETF firm Pando has set up an account, and Mulana IM became an introducing broker.
