Mining Giant Bitmain Acquires Bitcoin Cash Wallet Startup

Crypto mining behemoth Bitmain announced Monday it has acquired the startup behind an open-source bitcoin cash wallet called Telescope.

The browser-based wallet was launched earlier this year in an effort to enable instant bitcoin cash transactions.

At present, Telescope can operate on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, according to a press release, though the team it plans to expand to other platforms following the acquisition.

Supported by BitPay and moneybutton.com, the wallet stores cryptographic keys within a browser extension, meaning transactions are signed by the user's browser directly.

The project says that storing funds in this way offers users similar security to standalone wallets.

Nishant Sharma, head of international press relations and communications at Bitmain, said in the release that Telescope brings a "Simple but key innovation" to the bitcoin cash ecosystem.

"Browser-embedded cryptocurrency wallets are a promising technology. The Telescope development team is doing some very interesting work and we look forward to working together with them on the Telescope project and future bitcoin cash projects."

Bitmain holds nearly 6 percent of the total bitcoin cash in existence, as previously reported.

At press time, bitcoin cash is trading at $535 on average, according to CoinDesk's Price Index.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.