CoinFlex, the Hong Kong-based cryptoasset futures exchange, announced it had closed a further round of financing last week, raising $10 million from several crypto and blockchain investors.
Among those taking part in the financing round were Polychain Capital, the first crypto hedge fund to boast $1 million in assets under management, blockchain venture capitalist NGC Ventures, and rival venture fund Divergence Digital Currency.
Building Business
The exchange describes itself as the world’s first crypto-derivatives platform to offer physically delivery of bitcoin futures contracts.
Chief executive Mark Lamb told the South China Morning Post that the company aimed to boost business from Asian retail investors who are disillusioned with falling victim to price manipulation that he claims is rampant in cash-settled contracts. He added:
Professional and retail traders alike are affected by price manipulation in the cash-settled futures market. In physical delivered contracts, anyone long at expiry receives the underlying bitcoin. There are no formulas involved.
CoinFlex launched in February 2019 and Lamb has said his medium-term goal is to overtake Seychelles-based rival BitMEX, the world’s second-biggest crypto-derivatives exchange that has a daily trading volume of $2.86 billion. CoinFlex – currently ranked sixth by volume – trades around $264 million a day. Malta’s OKEx has the largest daily trading volumes of $3.16 billion.
