Chinese cryptocurrency wallet imToken raises $30M Series B led by Qiming and says it has 12M users with over $50B in crypto assets
Context & Ripple Effects
imToken's round closes a three-year gap since its $10M Series A from IDG Capital in May 2018, when it billed itself as the world's largest Ethereum wallet. The company now claims 12M users and over $50B in crypto assets under its wallets — meaning the Series B is priced off custody scale rather than app downloads.
The raise also fits a pattern of Chinese-linked blockchain companies attracting institutional capital despite operating from a jurisdiction where trading is restricted: Huobi and Tianya set up a $1B fund for domestic blockchain startups back in 2018, and mining chip developer Bitewei raised ~$20M that same year.
First-order effects
- Qiming takes the lead position on a wallet holding $50B in customer assets, giving a mainstream Chinese VC direct exposure to non-exchange crypto custody.
- imToken gets capital to push beyond its Ethereum-wallet origins — its stated expansion target since the IDG-led Series A was Asia and the US.
Second-order effects
- Exchanges and rival wallets must now compete against a custodian whose pitch is asset scale rather than trading volume, pressuring fee structures across the wallet market.
- Other China-based crypto infrastructure firms gain a fresh valuation benchmark: a self-custody wallet commanding a Series B on $50B in stored assets invites similar raises from adjacent custody-adjacent plays.
Third-order effects
- If wallets keep concentrating user assets at this scale, they become systemically important chokepoints in crypto — the layer regulators would engage first, distinct from exchanges.
- The recurring willingness of Chinese VCs and funds to back blockchain infrastructure (Huobi-Tianya's fund, Bitewei, now Qiming-imToken) points toward Chinese crypto firms structuring themselves as global products regardless of domestic policy.
The trend: Crypto value is migrating from exchanges toward scaled self-custody wallets, and Chinese-linked infrastructure firms are raising institutional rounds to own that layer.