A crypto asset management platform based in Singapore, Cobo has managed to raise a whopping $40 million in a Series B funding round. This investment will help the platform in boosting the development of DFaas i.e. decentralized finance as a service. IMO Ventures, AT&T Capital and DST Global co-led the funding round. The proceeds will be used by the company for the development of DeFi as a service (DFaas) infrastructure. Moreover, it will also use them for working on its existing custody services, which include its wallet as a service (WaaS), staking as a service (Staas) and trading.
Apart from that, Cobo will also use the funds to apply for regulatory licenses for countering the requirements of financing of terrorism (CFT) and for ensuring compliance to the anti-money laundering (AML) rules. As Asian investors are showing increasing interest in cryptocurrencies, both institutional and retail investors are searching for diversification options for hedging against inflation and other risks, as per the company. The co-founder and chief executive of Cobo, Discus Fish said that as interest in the crypto revolution is increasing all across Asia, it is time for expanding blockchain infrastructures for meeting the rising demand, particularly as institutions show a growing enthusiasm.
The CEO, who is also known as Shixing Mao, said that previously crypto applications had already evolved from Bitcoin to DeFi and have now moved towards NFTs. Thus, this investment would ultimately help Cobo in moving closer to its foundational vision of giving over a billion users with access to cryptocurrencies. Founded in 2017, Cobo’s primary mission was to bridge the gap between users and crypto, including institutional and retail ones, and for increasing the access of blockchain for everyone. The founders of Cobo include CEO Discus Fish, who also co-founded F2Pool.
There is also Changhao Jiang, the CTO, who was previously a platform engineer at Google and Facebook and co-founded Bihang, the Chinese encrypted digital wallet. Partner of AT&T Capital, Jasmine Zhang said that there is an increase in institutional demand because of the advancement seen in blockchain technology and innovation. The company’s CEO said that decentralized finance typically needs professional managers, which includes fund managers, for interacting with crypto-lending protocols directly, such as Compound, AAVE, Uniswap and Curve. As opposed to these DeFi platforms, the DeFi as a service (DFaas) by Cobo allows institutional investors to empower their staff and even computerized bots for performing different operations.
It is possible to use bots for automating low-risk operations, while multisignature confirmations are still needed by high-risk operations like movement of large sums. The DFaas infrastructure developed by Cobo underpins its crypto asset custodial services for institutional and retail investors and multisignature crypto wallet platform. These include Pionex, BitMart, F2Pool and Deribit. As far as retail investor clients are concerned, they use the Cobo Wallet for their crypto needs. Having offices in Seattle and Hong Kong, Cobo had managed to raise $13 million in October 2018 in a Series A funding round for the purpose of entering international markets.