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IOST prices are soaring, and the network is leading the charts for daily growth. The latest rise follows a major investment from a new Chinese blockchain fund, which will provide assistance as well as funding for the enterprise-oriented blockchain.

Bejing-based BlockGroup, with a reported $200M under management, announced its investment in IOST earlier today. Kevin Hsu, the founding partner, said they had been impressed by the project’s overall performance, commenting that it provides users with both “security and scalability.”

This is the fund’s second investment. In mid-March, BlockGroup announced an investment in Nuls, a Singapore-based team looking to develop blockchain solutions for enterprises.

The second project BlockGroup (@blockvcfund ‘s parent company) M&A crypto $200M fund invested in is @IOStoken @jimmyzhong_iost. Kevin Hsu, Partner at BlockGroup, said that IOST is an ultra-fast, decentralized blockchain project, achieving both security and scalability. pic.twitter.com/LIP9ygbl87 — BlockVC (@blockvcfund) April 1, 2019

The IOST price had already begun to surge in the run-up to the announcement, which went live at 09:00 BST. Individual IOST tokens traded at $0.009 at 07:00 BST this morning and began to gain value soon after. IOST hit $0.011 minutes before the news went public.

The IOST price was $0.0112 at press time, a 10% increase from this morning. In total, IOST’s market capitalization gained $16M in only a few hours.

BlockGroup was attracted to IOST because of the rapid growth and adoption following a mainnet launch in February. A spokesperson pointed out that it was currently the fourth largest public blockchain, with more than 90,000 live accounts.

“This project [IOST] is totally underestimated because of the bear market,” the spokesperson explained to Crypto Briefing. Describing it as one of the “most promising projects,” they explained that IOST will provide the infrastructure for a new decentralized economy in years to come.

Although the spokesperson refrained from details, they said the investment, described as “strategic,” had been substantial. BlockGroup invested in the project directly, and bought IOST tokens on the open market. The fund will also share resources and expertise to help IOST developers manage assets and build their ecosystem.

IOST – short for Internet of Services Token – is designed to be a blockchain for businesses. It uses sharding, a technique that separates nodes into smaller consensus groups, allowing it to handle more dApp transactions and higher speeds. IOST founder Jimmy Zhong believes this will make blockchain widely available to businesses and consumers.

Established in 2017, the IOST blockchain launched six months ahead of schedule. It is already well-connected and well-funded, with a $50M fund from startup incubator Bluehill. The project has also partnered with Huobi and CoinGecko, who will help build-out and develop the IOST ecosystem.

The author is invested in digital assets, but none mentioned in this article.

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