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As our team receives ongoing questions and pings from our western readers on the things happening in Asia, we are re-surfacing some of the in-depth coverage interviews and write-ups of notable themes, organizations and figures in Asia that continue to be relevant in the cryptocurrency circle. We hope that once travel opens up again, you’ll be more prepared than ever to pursue and learn about the happenings in Asia.

While most people in the crypto community are aware of Bitmain’s towering presence and role in the mining community, few know about the role Bitmain has played in the larger crypto community. We can learn alot about Bitmain’s involvement through its investment arm. This post highlight the numerous investments Bitmain has made since inception.

In the past 4 years, according to some statistics that are unfortunately not well supported by evidence, Bitmain apparently saw 4 managed funds. From 2015 to 2019, it invested in 33 projects. In this post, we take a look at the 4 years of investments made by Bitmain and list out the 33 projects invested by the Bitmain investment team.

Below are the Investments by Year

2015-

1. Sxbcar – Car marketplace

2016-

1. Bitkan – crypto data market place

2017

1. RSK – side chain technology
2. Hitchain- a public chain
3. Elastos- a public chain
4. Towerchain- China based blockchain solution company
5. Hailian Technology- mining pool and cloud mining provider affiliated with ViaBTC
6. Coldlar- crypto cold wallet and app
7. ViaBTC- mining pool, blockchain explorer
8. Luobotec- AI robots
9. Suisse Technology- blockchain development company

2018

1. Yours- social network where you can earn Bitcoin
2. 8btc- crypto community and news
3. Circle- crypto exchange
4. Path- unknown
5. Starkware – zk-proof technology developer
6. Dex.top- crypto DEX
7. PopulStay- A decentralized home-sharing platform
8. Opera- browser
9. Dorahacks- crypto and tech hacking company
10. Bitmax- crypto exchange
11. Block.one- blockchain development company
12. Certik- smart contract auditing company
13. Nuls- public chain
14. Asch Chain- public chain
15. Bizkey- crypto payment platform
16. TribeOS- bitcoin-cash powered advertising
17. Lambda- data storage blockchain project
18. 1000 video- urban AI services
19. ErisX- crypto derivatives provider

2019

1. Quoine/Liquid – exchange
2. Matrixport- crypto asset management company
3. Crystal Vision Technology- AI chips

Source: Jinse Media

We learned that most of the investments are strategic investments as Bitmain’s influence in the industry grew increasingly more. But a few notably were angel round investments, including Bitmax, Matrixport, Towerchain.

One trend we noticed that initially, the investment arms primary focus in 2016 and 2017 was focused on data, blockchain development and public chains. As we saw increasingly more trading activity, we saw investments in exchanges and trading platforms and tools such as Circle, Dex.top, ErisX, as well as more community-driven investments like Dorahacks and 8btc. In 2019, perhaps due to the departure of Shengyue to Matrixport, the investments slowed down significantly.

Will Bitmain continue to make investments after its internal founder drama subsides and the company finds its way back to the IPO path? With Jihan Wu as CEO, we believe so.