Binance Invests in Chinese Crypto Coin News Platform

While China is keen on releasing a bank-issued cryptocurrency that would challenge the eventual launch of Libra, the nation has a strict anti-crypto stance. As a result, Binance was forced to move its headquarters out of China in 2018 and move to Europe. Two years later, the exchange revisited China by investing in a Chinese crypto coin news platform.

After moving their headquarters to several locations all around Asia, crypto exchange Binance has finally decided to settle in Malta in 2018. Following the relocation to Europe to escape China’s aggressive stance toward the crypto sector, Binance rapidly turned into one of the most significant cryptocurrency exchanges.

Binance puts money on crypto coin news platform Mars Finance

Only two years later, Binance returns to China by investing in a local crypto coin news platform, Mars Finance. As Bloomberg reports, Binance participated in a $200 million funding round. Besides the exchange, several other important entities such as Matrixport and VC firm Cejuan Ventures participated.

CEO and Founder Changpeng Zhao confirmed the company’s inclusion in a tweet, stating: ‘Let’s make more news, and less FUD. Invest in the industry.”

According to the company’s official website, the Mars Finance Group focuses on the crypto coin news industry and keeps pace with emerging trends. Their services are focused on industry data, media, community operation, and training and education. Mars Finance was founded by Wang Feng, a local entrepreneur.

Bloomberg’s sources cite that the company has already completed two funding rounds, whose participants included OKCoin and Huobi.

Is crypto a new trend in China?

According to data of SimilarWeb, Mars Finance has a fairly inactive user base. However, the Chinese version of the crypto coin news platform is visited by around 124,000 users on a monthly basis, being ranked 70,947 in China. This comes to no surprise, as a survey at the beginning of the year had already found out that 80% of the participating Chinese were convinced crypto investments were a new trend in China. On top of that, 40% of those questioned for the survey were already planning to invest in digital currencies themselves.

Additionally, despite being known to be rather skeptical about cryptocurrencies, China is set to launch its own digital currency soon. The new cryptocurrency will be issued by the Chinese central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and challenge global solutions such as Facebook’s Libra coin of which a large part of the crypto community is suspecting that it will crumble under the ongoing regulatory pressure in the end. After all, several founding members have already gotten cold feet and started to distance themselves from the project that is expected to generate a revenue of up to 19 billion dollars.

In contrast, the Chinese cryptocurrency seems to encounter much less problems. After all, the deputy director of the PBoC recently stated that their project will be released by the end of 2019. At first, the bank-issued cryptocurrency will only be available in only some parts of China, before finally being offered in the whole country.