In December 2014, two young Singaporeans flew home from California with something unusual in their luggage: a personal cheque from Tim Draper. Yusho Liu and Gerry Eng had just finished Tribe 4 of Adam Draper's Boost VC accelerator, a programme for bitcoin start-ups, and Draper senior, the famous venture capitalist, had decided to back them himself.
The idea was simple and, in 2014, risky. Bitcoin was in a long slump after the collapse of Mt. Gox. Most people in Singapore had never owned a coin. Liu and Eng wanted to make buying one as easy as using a bank app, and they called the company Coinhako.
For years Coinhako operated in a grey zone where there was no clear licence.
The records say little about their childhoods or their schools. What the record does show is what they chose. They went to the accelerator in California, which treated bitcoin as the next internet, and then came back to a small, conservative financial centre that was still deciding how to regulate it.
What almost nobody remembers is how long they had to wait. For years Coinhako operated in a grey zone where there was no clear licence. Singapore's Payment Services Act came into force in 2020. In November 2021, Coinhako said it had in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore for a major payment institution licence, calling itself the first local, non-bank crypto exchange to get there.
The timing was better than anyone could have known. A month later, in December 2021, the SBI-Sygnum-Azimut Digital Asset Opportunity fund made its first-ever investment in Coinhako, a round that was three times oversubscribed. The money was meant for expansion across Southeast Asia and for Coinhako Prive, a service for institutions and wealthy individuals.
Then the market turned. In 2022, the crypto industry went through failures that took down large exchanges. A local exchange with a regulator's blessing was now a selling point, not a cost. Filings seen by data providers point to about US$10 million raised that year. In early 2026, reports said SBI Holdings intended to buy a majority of Coinhako Group, with the deal pending.
The tale holds one instruction for founders. Liu and Eng chose a field with no rules, took the money of one early believer, and then did the slow, dull work of being ready when the rules arrived. The patience, not the pitch, was the product.