Beijing-based mining pool and bitcoin hardware mining producer Bitmain that operates the world's largest bitcoin mining pool Antpool funded BitKan, a Chinese trading services and bitcoin-related data provider.

As reported by CoinDesk, Bitmain appeared to be the sole sponsor in the Series A round, investing US $1.6 million. In November 2015, Shenzhen-based BitKan was supported by Lanqi Venture Capital Investment in an angel round investment.

Founded in 2013 by former Huawei employees, BitKan serves as a platform of bitcoin-related trading and pricing information as well as a trading services provider. Recently, the platform has launched the option of over-the-counter (OTC) bitcoin trading.

With the investment and the new trading feature the company hopes to consolidate its market position, becoming more competitive with respect to already existing peer-to-peer BTC trading platforms.

“The new feature, when leveraging BitKan's existing user base and news and price charting functionality, holds great potential that has already been demonstrated by services with similar functionality such as LocalBitcoins.”

Bitmain operates Antpool, the world’s largest bitcoin mining pool that accumulates 28% of the bitcoin network’s hash rate. Bitmain also produces mining hardware. In September 2015, for instance, it designed a new bitcoin miner, reportedly twice more efficient in terms of energy use compared to the previous one. It terms of its hardware’s customer base, Bitmain targets mostly the average user who seeks to mine bitcoin.

BitKan is not the first bitcoin company to be sponsored by Bitmain. In February 2016, the miner also invested in Simplex, an Israeli payments service working on enabling bitcoin purchases with credit cards. Together with another bitcoin miner, Cumberland Mining, and the crowdfunding platform FundersClub, Bitmain was among the principal investors. In March 2016, Bitmain led a funding round for Rootstock, smart contract developer designed as a sidechain operating on bitcoin’s blockchain, whose aim is to expand the latter’s functionality with smart contacts. Observers remark that based on its investment history, Bitmain aims at further strengthening and diversification of the bitcoin ecosystem.

Anna Lavinskaya