Taking advantage of the ever-expanding data pool, the blockchain-focused online portal is now likely to grow into a professional third-party service platform.
Bitcoin near monitor. Image credit: André François McKenzie on Unsplash
Mars Finance (火星财经) just announced a new round of financing from Binance and other investors. Though the investment amount has not been disclosed, the new valuation after financing was disclosed at USD 200 million. It is the third round of financing since it was established in last year. Previous investors include IDG Capital.
Mars Finance was officially launched on February 8, 2018. It was founded by serial entrepreneur Wang Feng (王峰). Currently, its team includes members with career experience in giant technology companies like Tencent, Huawei, and Sohu. At present, this website mainly provides blockchain information, free and publicly accessible hosting services for blockchain and cryptocurrency reference material, market segments and online blockchain communities.
Another product, 'Consensus Lab' from Mars Finance, has been active in the blockchain investment industry. According to its official website, this lab is an institutional investor engaged in the research, investment and incubation integration of the blockchain field. It includes the Consensus Investment Fund, the Consensus Quantitative FOF and Consensus Industry Alliance Fund. The Consensus Lab focuses on and invests in technical platforms, infrastructure and international projects that related to blockchain.
Public data has shown that Mars Finance achieved extraordinary growth in 2019, with an eight-fold increase in visits in the first half of the year, and significant increases in visit depths and advertising revenue. According to third-party data indexes such as Alexa, Baidu Index and WeChat Index, Mars Finance has become one of China's most influential blockchain information portals.
Mars Finance is now working on dealing with the nearly ten thousand new pieces of information generated by the blockchain industry every day. Combing big data and algorithms, it will distribute multi-dimensional information for millions of users. At the same time, through the 'Mars Account' information self-publishing platform, it has provided more than 3,400 key opinion leaders (KOLs) and the organization with open and transparent information service support.
Wang Feng also revealed that this round of financing will quickly allow Mars Finance to build a model similar to 'Toutiao (今日头条) plus Eastmoney (东方财富)', and to provide investors with professional and efficient investment services to meet the pace of the ongoing changes.
Binance is a global cryptocurrency exchange that provides a platform for trading more than 100 different cryptocurrencies. Since early 2018, Binance has been the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of trading volume. As one of the investors, this is Binance's first strategic investment in China. "Information is playing an important role in the trading of digital assets. Mars Finance has established a wide range of industrial influences in a short period of time", said Zhao Changpeng (赵长鹏), founder of Binance.
This year, blockchain has still been playing an important part in the global technology industry. One major story concerns social media giant Facebook’s announcement of its cryptocurrency project Libra, with a whitepaper outlining how the multi-platform currency will work. Even though the project has faced criticism and opposition from central banks, the use of cryptocurrency and blockchain has been developed for applications in many settings. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) last month said that it was close to launching its own digital yuan, which move has been considered yet another huge potential transformation for China's financial system.