Japanese cryptocurrency management service provider and SmartCoin operator Orb has raised US $2.3 million in seed funding from leading Japanese venture capital firms and angel investors including SBI investment.

With the new financing, the Orb team plans to allocate its funds to the development of Orb’s cryptocurrency management platform, which is currently in private beta.

The Orb team will also use the funds to continue the development of their newly launched decentralized cloud computing system, which allows users and developers to authenticate assets and transactions on the blockchain. Orb co-founder and CEO Masa Nakatsu firmly believes that Orb is a great contribution to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and will become one of the main competitors of Chain, Ethereum and 21 Inc.

Prior to the development of Orb, Nakatsu has cofounded several multi-million dollar ventures in Japan and Silicon Valley. Nakatsu founded Japan’s largest social lending platform Maneo, with which he raised more than $140 million in funding.

Over the past few decades, Nakatsu has focused on the search of solutions toward the problems of traditional currency systems. Nakatsu founded Musavy, a content curation venture in Silicon Valley and worked with the Business Development department of Groupon.

With his expertise in finance, eCommerce and online payments, Nakatsu plans to grow Orb into a prominent cryptocurrency platform in the near future.