China-headquartered digital currency miner Bixin has formed a $100m fund called Bixin Ventures that will make direct investments in cryptocurrency technology developers.
Bixin mines cryptocurrencies in addition to providing storage services for traders. The establishment of Bixin Ventures comes nine months after it allocated $66m to a fund of funds intended to help hedge funds and other liquidity providers bolster the liquidity framework of Bitcoin markets.
Wang Xi, partner at Bixin Ventures, said: “One of our primary priorities is to help make the ecosystem truly global. Our investment team is working alongside the founders to provide guidance and expertise for growth in Asia.”
Bixin Ventures also disclosed it has provided $2m to co-lead a $10.9m funding round for O(1) Labs, the US-based developer of an ultra-light blockchain known as Mina, with fund manager Three Arrows Capital.
SNZ Holding, HashKey Capital, Signum Capital, NGC Ventures, Alternity, Fenbushi Capital, IOSG Ventures, Digital Asset Capital Management, Skytale Capital and YBB Foundation filled out the round.
O(1) Labs had previously raised $3.5m from MetaStable, Electric Capital, Polychain and angel investor Naval Ravikant in a May 2018 seed round before adding $15m from Coinbase Ventures, a subsidiary of digital currency exchange Coinbase, as well as Accomplice, Paradigm and General Catalyst, in April 2019.
In addition to (O1) Labs, the fund has also backed projects including stablecoin payment system xDai, Microbit, Algorand, Nervos, Arweave, Conflux, Certik and Marlin.
