Cryptocurrency investment platform Kikitrade today announced that it has received US$4 million in strategic funding from British hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard, underlining strong investor appetite in Asia’s upsurging digital asset market.

Alan Howard’s backing came shortly after Kikitrade closed its US$8 million pre-series A funding round in April, joined by a group of eminent international investors including Sequoia-affiliated Dragonfly Capital, blockchain gaming unicorn Animoca Brands and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. The extended round brought Kikitrade’s total capital raised to US$12 million.

Debuted in Q4 2020, Kikitrade has recorded a robust growth in 2021, with its total number of registered users doubling in the last two months. More than two-thirds of its users are millennials or Generation Z.

The fresh capital will be invested in continuous product innovation, compliance, and user acquisition across Asia – with an emphasis on Southeast Asia, Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong – where cryptocurrencies’ penetration rates are significantly lower than that in the United States.

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Allen Ng, co-founder of Kikitrade, said, “The strategic backing from Mr. Alan Howard, a legendary investor that my team and I look up to, gives us a great deal of confidence to continuously innovate and drive the mass adoption of digital assets.”

“Kikitrade has built an extremely user-friendly platform to enable adoption of digital assets among millennials and Gen Z users and we are very excited to partner with the team as they scale the platform in APAC,” said Alan Howard.