ViaBTC, the world’s TOP5 Bitcoin mining pool, announced that it has closed series A funding of 20 million CNY. The investment was led by Bitmain, a leading manufacturer of bitcoin mining hardware and saw participation of private investors “who are not ready to reveal themselves now.”

The Shenzhen-based company stated that it will utilize the finances from the funding to initially launch a CNY/BTC exchange in around two months with a USD/BTC exchange to follow.

Sara Ouyang, Chief Operating Officer at ViaBTC, revealed that:

“The CNY exchange will be based in China and provide no margins or futures, but the USD exchange will be based offshore and will provide margins and futures as permitted by relevant regulations.”

When it comes to regulations, she mentioned the PBOC in particular, saying there’s no specific policies yet but the exchange intends to comply with the current requirements.

She added that:

“We’d like to try tapping all our potentials and see how much more we can do for the industry and community as well. We love Bitcoin and that’s why we have ViaBTC. As what we’ve been visioning, we do want to make the world a better place via Bitcoin.”

ViaBTC entered into Bitcoin industry in June 2016 and it mined the 2000th blocks early this year. The tech-sensitive mining pool boasts three“firsts” including first Chinese pool that pays out transaction fees, the first public pool that runs Bitcoin Unlimited, and first pool to offer free transaction accelerator service.

Last December, ViaBTC officially launched its US stratum server, which is an independent mining server. This Stratum server cannot be used on the network; instead, they are directly connected to computers. The launch of new stratum allowed the company to provide services to users with more stable connection and lower rejection rate. And now it has a user-base of nearly 10,000, among which 80% are from outside China.