Bitcoin.com Acquires Japanese Blockchain Developer 03 Labs

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Bitcoin.com has acquired Japanese blockchain developers O3 Labs and will absorb the team, the company announced Monday.

The deal, which began in talks a few months ago and closed recently for an undisclosed sum, will see O3 Labs’ eight-person developer team integrate into Bitcoin.com’s 30-person engineering team, CEO Stefan Rust told CoinDesk.

They will begin working on applications to support the bitcoin cash network. Bitcoin.com’s Executive Chairman Roger Ver, whose early bet on bitcoin and subsequent crypto evangelism earned him the nickname “bitcoin jesus,” is a major promoter of Bitcoin cash.

Rust told CoinDesk that the partnership will play into Bitcoin.com’s goal of opening up global finance and wallet functionality.

In a statement, he also said the partnership “will give users the ability to manage, grow, and spend while doing business with whomever they want, whenever they want, without the need for traditional banks or financial intermediaries.”

When asked for the specific projects O3’s members would now work on, Rust declined, saying only that projects including a wallet “privacy mode” and integration of simple ledger protocol tokens that pay holders dividends, were in the works.

“I think you can see some interesting innovations in our wallet within the next 2-3 months.”

The O3 team has previously built NEO and Ontology blockchain applications, the statement said