Chinese mining pool ViaBTC announced that it has closed series A funding of 20 million CNY from Bitmain, one of the world's leading manufacturers of bitcoin mining hardware, and other private investors.

The company stated that it will utilize the finances from the funding to support its business expansion of a global cryptocurrency exchange which the company plans to launch later this year. ViaBTC will be initially launching a CNY/BTC exchange in about two months for the domestic market.

The company mined the 2000th blocks early this year and has unique features including first Chinese pool that pays out transaction fees, the first public pool that runs Bitcoin Unlimited, most tech-sensitive mining pool and first pool to offer free transaction accelerator service.

Last December, ViaBTC officially launched its US stratum server, which is an independent mining server. This Stratum server cannot be used on the network; instead, they are directly connected to computers. The launch of new stratum allowed the company to provide services to users with more stable connection and lower rejection rate.