If anyone needed an additional incentive to promote new blockchain and cryptocurrency projects, Binance has the perfect answer. The large crypto exchange has announced that has launched a $1-billion fund to startups working to increase the growth of both technologies.
Binance anticipates injecting the billion-dollar “Social Impact Fund” over ten $100-million stages. The fund will serve as a fund that invests in other funds – a “fund of funds,” as well as one that contributes to blockchain projects. According to the firm’s head of Binance Labs, Ella Zhang, the capital will be taken from Binance’s reserves in a direct contribution to the community.
Zhang stated, “We believe it’s a disruptive social experiment. Binance Labs hopes to work with more aspirational projects to explore blockchain applications and together move forward the growth of the industry.”
The fund of funds, according to Zhang, will invest in 20 different funds. Each must control a pool of a minimum of $100 million, and the investments made by Binance into the funds will come from the company’s BNB cryptocurrency token.
One project that has already been selected for funding is a ride-hailing project out of China. The project uses the blockchain as its foundation and was created by the founder of the Chinese ride-hailing app Kuaidi Dache and Chen Weixing, CEO and developer for Funcity. The announcement of the funding was made last week by Chen at the Big Data expo in Guizhou, China.
Binance is an international cryptocurrency exchange founded by Changpeng Zhao, founder of Fusion Systems. According to the website coinmkaretcap.com, it had the second-highest number of transactions in the past 24 hours, making it one of the most successful exchanges in the crypto space. Binance held an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for its ERC20-compliant BNB token last year, raising $15 million when it ended in July.
The exchange recently announced that it planned on moving from its home in Japan to Malta in the wake of increased regulatory pressure in Japan. The move also will give the exchange the ability to expand banking relationships in order to launch a fiat-to-crypto exchange, something that previously was not possible. No date for the move has been established.
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