Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinhako today announced a 500% increase in trading volume during the first five months of 2021 compared to the whole of 2020, and said it is considering an initial public offering.

Fast facts:

  • Coinhako, which launched in 2014, backed by investors such as Tim Draper and Boost VC, projects that it will see its trading volume top S$100 billion (US$7 billion) by the end of 2021, driven by increasing mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia, according to a company statement shared with Forkast.News.
  • The platform says that in the first five months of 2021 it has seen an increase of more than 700% in the average number of users trading on its platform each month, and an increase of about 90% in account openings month on month. Coinhako now has more than 300,000 registered users in Singapore and 150,000 monthly active users, on average.
  • In Singapore, Coinhako says it has observed “a greater appetite for crypto from millennials” and that its customer base consists of mainly white-collar professionals aged between 25 and 44.
  • According to Coinhako, Bitcoin is the most traded cryptocurrency on its platform. Dogecoin’s trading volume has rivaled that of Ethereum over the past two months as the second-most traded cryptocurrency.
  • “Along with rising public interest in crypto, the last few months have also seen strong institutional interest in cryptocurrencies from global giants like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard and PayPal,” said Yusho Liu, Coinhako’s co-founder and CEO. “Bitcoin’s increased credibility as a store of value has driven this. Strong institutional interest and confidence in crypto has further enhanced the appeal of crypto trading to a broader category of audience. Given how the crypto markets in the US and Europe have developed, we believe it is only a matter of time that the crypto industry in this part of the world will likewise take off.”