Series A Funding Round Brings In $13 Million For Beijing Startup For Crypto Wallets

Cryptocurrency wallet startup Cobo has decided that it is time to expand their Beijing-based business to overseas users. In an effort to do so, they recently held a Series A funding round, which closed at $13 million in support. The equity financing was announced on Wednesday.

The funding for Cobo is based on the support of multiple ventures, including:

Mao Shixing, who is also known as the Discus Fish within China’s crypto economy, is the founder of Cobo, which he setup in 2017. His co-founder, Jiang Changhao, was previously an engineer for Google and Facebook. He already has experience with establishing a crypto wallet startup – Bihang – which was ultimately sold in 2013 as an acquisition for OKCoin.

Shixing actually left college at age 23 to give himself the opportunity to establish one of the earliest mining pools in China called F2Pool. The success at the time and now has made it possible for them to own 7% of the hashrate globally for Bitcoin.

His current venture with Cobo has employed 60 people and has made it possible for 500,000 users to have access to the wallet service, though 80% of those users are from China. Surprisingly, the application only went live this year, but the staking pool brought in plenty of interest and volume.

The wallet service lets users store cryptocurrencies through a proof-of-work mechanism, but it also lets them consolidate assets to continue with proof-of-stake mining. The rewards from the mining are distributing proportionally.

With the newly added capital, Mao has said that it gives Cobo the opportunity to offer its services outside of China, considering that the local economy has reached a “plateau.” He expanded, saying,

“We are now looking to recruit more engineers as we target to expand to Southeast Asian markets like Vietnam and Indonesia, as well as African countries.”

Liu Lixin, who is the head of hardware at Cobo, added that the company is launching Cobo Vault, which is a “military grade” wallet product. Cobo Vault also has a self-destruct feature that would eliminate all data inside if someone tries to forcibly remove the chip. If that feature is activated, the only way a user can regain access is with mnemonic phrases that will be translated into their private key.

The company has already opened up for pre-ordering the hardware, though it is not planned to be shipped out until early December.

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