Asian digital asset management firm HashKey Group has sealed a $100-million Series A financing round to join the unicorn club at a pre-money valuation of $1.2 billion.
Hong Kong-headquartered HashKey Group roped in prominent institutional investors, leading Web3 institutions, and strategic partners for the Series A round, a company release stated without divulging the investors’ details.
The proceeds will help solidify the crypto firm’s Web3 ecosystem as well as ramp up its product offerings in Hong Kong, among others, per the release.
In August, HashKey Exchange, the virtual asset exchange arm of the group, was the first to offer retail services in Hong Kong. Four months within its launch, the firm recorded a total of 155,000 registered users.
As a spinoff of the Chinese multinational conglomerate Wanxiang Group, HashKey Group’s businesses include HashKey Capital, aglobal asset manager investing in blockchain technology and digital assets. HashKey Capital closed its third fund – HashKey FinTech Investment Fund III – at $500 million in January 2023.
Founded in 2018, the group, with operations in Singapore and Tokyo, also offers blockchain node validation and tokenisation services, among others.
The deal came after the digital asset industry wrapped up a year that saw the price of Bitcoin skyrocket over 160% in 2023, while ether’s price went up 95% during the same period. Although the price rally bodes well for the industry, crypto venture capital funding remained at a record low in 2023, compared with the 2022 banner year.
2023 saw only one-third of VC investments logged in the previous year, according to a report published by the research arm of crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital.
“However, the crypto industry appears set to surge in 2024 and central banks are poised to ease, the combination of which could lead to renewed interest in crypto venture capital this year,” analysts commented in the report.
As the home of HashKey Group, Hong Kong has so far launched a series of new rules to embrace digital assets including approving virtual asset trading platforms to offer services to retail investors and the public offering of virtual asset futures exchange-traded funds (VA ETFs). In December 2023, the city’s financial watchdog said in a joint circular that it is prepared to accept applications of VA spot ETFs.