Korbit raises $3M to expand Bitcoin adoption in Korea

Korbit has announced it has closed a $3 million Series A funding round led by SoftBank Ventures Korea.

From the US side, Pantera Capital led the round with participation from BAM Ventures and previous investors which include: Bitcoin Opportunity Corp., Tim Draper, Pietro Dova and initial investor Strong Ventures.

SoftBank Ventures Korea Partner Kangjoon Ryan Lee said: “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.”

Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital, said: “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,” adding that, “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.”

CEO of Korbit, Tony Lyu, said: “User excitement for Korbit Pay has vastly exceeded our expectations, 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.”

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