Born in Singapore but raised in Australia, it was Marcus Lim’s adopted country that gave him his first taste of business success.
The entrepreneur founded online marketplace oneflare.com.au in 2011. Five years later he had secured almost AU$20m in funding and sold 35% of OneFlare to Fairfax Media.
Like all good entrepreneurs, Lim immediately began looking for his next big opportunity.
In early 2017, he moved back to Singapore and began investing in blockchain companies. That’s when he says he identified the need for easier access to buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
The dawn of Zipmex and the pivot down under
In 2018, Marcus Lim launched cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex in Singapore.
The company has since been pursuing vigorous expansion through South-East Asia, but today Lim confirmed Zipmex is making a (seemingly somewhat unplanned) pivot south and will soon launch in Australia.
“Zipmex views the Australian market as a strategic opportunity to expand our trading platform,” he told the AFR.
“Australians are becoming increasingly comfortable with trading crypto assets and we want to provide them with a better trading experience.”
For Micky readers this news might not come as a big surprise.
Last month, Lim told this website he’s anticipating a digital asset boom down under.
“Bitcoin was born out of the GFC representing digital gold, so we could see the increase in value for Bitcoin as a result of Australia’s anticipated stock market correction; there’s the potential for this to lead to a boom in digital asset trading across crypto exchanges,” Lim told Micky.
“Cryptocurrencies could alleviate some of the financial pressure on traditional markets as they operate as an alternative asset class.”
It now appears he’s taken his first steps in taking advantage of that predicted crypto boom.
Will Lim achieve success with Zipmex on the scale he did with OneFlare? Only time will tell, but we know Aussies do love their crypto.
Zipmex does, however, face some stiff competition with Australian-owned exchanges such as Independent Reserve, CoinSpot, Cointree and CoinJar all well-established players in the Aussie crypto exchange market.