Korbit, the leading provider of bitcoin exchange, wallet, and merchant payment processing in South Korea has closed a $3 million Series A funding round, the company announced Monday.
The funding was led by SoftBank Ventures Korea, in addition to Pantera Capital, and other investors that include Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Opportunity Corp., BAM Ventures, Tim Draper (who recently purchased a large amount of seized Silk Road bitcoins), and more.
Speaking about the investors involved with the funding, Korbit CEO Tony Lyu said that, “the leading investors in the Bitcoin space have chosen Korbit and continue to show support.”
Kangjoon Ryan Lee, partner at SoftBank Ventures Korea, said:
[blockquote style=”2″]The costs and security issues arising from the reliance on financial intermediaries for credit guarantees has been mitigated through Bitcoin’s technological innovation. Bitcoin provides big advantages in terms of cost savings and ease of use compared to traditional currencies and credit cards. I expect Bitcoin to create meaningful markets in payments and international remittance. Going forward, Bitcoin can play a role in wider variety of industries, for example enabling machine-to-machine transactions or acting as a platform for smart contracts.[/blockquote]
Remarks from Mr. Dan Morehead of Pantera on the funding:
[blockquote style=”2″]South Korea has a booming e-commerce market and was an early adopter of virtual goods. The government supports innovation and even the banking foundation is invested in Korbit. Pantera Capital is excited about the investment in Korbit and confident that Bitcoin will thrive in Korea because of its early adoption of innovative technologies and abundance of technical talent […] Pantera believes that Bitcoin has the potential to transform the way we use money. It will do for payments what the Internet has done for communications and commerce.[/blockquote]
Korbit is still very much a new company, but their growth over the past year has been incredible.
“User excitement for Korbit Pay has vastly exceeded our expectations,” said Tony Lyu. “We’ll be focusing on improving the security and ease of use of our services with this new round of funding and continue to bring in top talent from around the world.”