TL;DR: Last year was a notoriously awful one for the world’s largest cryptocurrency hardware manufacturer, Bitmain, and its co-founder Jihan Wu. Crypto Winter took its toll, and an executive shakeup combined with some restructuring placed both futures in uncertain territory. However, it appears Wu is going ahead with a highly anticipated spinoff project, Matrixport, and CoinSpice has an early look at its beta release.

Matrixport Now in Beta

“Founded in January 2019, Matrixport is your gateway to digital economy where you can trade, custody, invest and borrow crypto assets in one stop,” a company blog posted recently. “With rich industry resources and leading technology capabilities, Matrixport aims to create the next generation digital financial service platform. Our vision is to bring more open and equal financial opportunities to the world with blockchain technologies.”

The beta release’s ambitious plans include custody services, OTC trading, and cryptocurrency lending while being “headquartered in Singapore with offices worldwide.” Their Twitter account is so new, it has less than a dozen followers at press time, and hasn’t tweeted. The startup promises “to launch more regulatory compliant blockchain financial services,” touting its membership as a “Swiss FINMA Supervised SRO,” and its strategic partners include Bitmain, BTC.com, Antpool, and Bitdeer.

Among its services is an intriguing teaser, “Matrix Pay,” described as a “Leading crypto payment solution, global customer reach,” but details are not readily apparent beyond some standard language: “Hot and cold storage private keys generated and stored in HSM; Multi-sig cold storage; Bank-grade vaults, multi-sig mechanism, geographically distributed across 3 continents; System security design; System segregation, role-based control; Service level assurance; Quick withdrawal guarantees, 7 x 24 customer support, high availability,” the site claims.

Rumors about the project date back to at least Spring of this year, as CoinSpice reported, which was then said to be staffed by “laid off former members of the Copernicus staff, who worked on Bitcoin Cash-related projects at” Bitmain. There also seems to be a connection to Winway Energy Limited, (which has a wallet listed on the App Store), according to the startup’s underdeveloped pages. As of publication, there has been no official comment from Wu, Bitmain, nor Matrixport.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.

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