One of China’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges has been bought by an unnamed Hong Kong investment group. According to a statement by BTCC today, the buyout aims to help develop an international facing platform, expanding the company’s remit outside of China.
Senior Vice President of BTCC Mining Pool, Denver Zhao, said:
“We now have the resources to more fully realise our vision of safeguarding and stabilising digital currencies’ blockchains… Going forward, we’ll provide better, fairer, more transparent, and more comprehensive mining services to our customers worldwide.”
Such a change in company direction has likely been driven by the recent crackdown on cryptocurrency products and services within China. The nation, which was once one of the largest markets for digital currencies, has moved to a more hostile stance against the space in recent months. Their offensive has largely focused on initial coin offerings, as well as mining and exchanges.
With such an unsure environment, it’s no surprise that BTCC have made the decision to move operations elsewhere. The founder of the company, Bobby Lee, stated:
“Today’s acquisition is an incredible milestone for BTCC that validates all of our hard work over the past few years. I’m very excited about the resources this gives BTCC to move faster and aggressively grow our businesses in 2018 and beyond”.
Founded in 2011, BTCC was China’s first Bitcoin exchange. However, according to today’s statement, they will now focus their three major products on a more global market. These are their mining pool, BTCC Pool, their cryptocurrency wallet, Mobi, and their USD Exchange. Bloomberg report that it will be Denver Zhao, Mark Ma, and Aaron Choi who will lead each respectively.
The statement from BTCC included an optimistic outlook for the company’s future by Bobby Lee:
“I’m excited about this new chapter in BTCC’s future — the acquisition poises us for success in 2018 and beyond,” Lee said. “The resources we’ll gain and the new set of experienced and talented executives we’ll have joining the BTCC team give us impetus to lead every segment of the digital currency ecosystem, including the pool, payments, and exchange businesses.”
At present, scant details are known about the acquisition. Despite his appearance at Blockchain London on January 23, Bobby Lee and company are yet to disclose either the figure or the name of the company who have decided to take on BTCC.