Meitu, a Chinese photo editing company has put $40 million worth of bitcoin and ether on its balance sheet, becoming the latest firm to join the institutional crypto buying spree.

• Chinese company Meitu bought $22.1 million worth of ether and $17.9 million worth of bitcoin on March 5th.
• Meitu follows the likes of MicroStrategy, Tesla and Square in purchasing bitcoin. But the Chinese appmaker appears to be the first major company to buy ether.
• The company said cryptocurrencies provide “diversification to holding cash” and expects to launch dApps.

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The Hong Kong-listed company announced on Sunday it bought $22.1 million worth of ether and $17.1 million worth of bitcoin.

Meitu follows in the footsteps of Microstrategy, Tesla and Square in purchasing bitcoin. In contrast, the Chinese company appears to be the first publicly listed company to also put money on the ethereum blockchain.

The firm’s decision might have been influenced by the fact that Ethereum is on the brink of a major update that will make it a deflationary asset by July. Aside from that, ethereum is poised to be the building block of web 3.0 as scaling solutions are just around the corner fir the number one dApp blockchain platform.

In a statement, Meitu said that “blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt both existing financial and technology industries, similar to the manner in which mobile internet has disrupted the PC internet and many other offline industries.”

“The Board believes cryptocurrencies have ample room for appreciation in value and by allocating part of its treasury in cryptocurrencies can also serve as a diversification to holding cash (which is subject to depreciation pressure due to aggressive increases in money supply by central banks globally) in treasury management,” Meitu said.

Attempting to woo investors, the Chinese company elaborated on its decision, saying that Meitu “has the vision and determination to embrace technological evolution, and hence preparing its foray into the blockchain industry.”

Meitu shares were 3.3% higher at 1:44 p.m. Hong Kong time after surging over 14% earlier in the day.

Meitu noted that cryptocurrency prices are “still highly volatile.”

The company is “evaluating the feasibility of integrating blockchain technologies to its various overseas businesses” including potentially launching ethereum-based apps or investing into other blockchain businesses.

Last week, Amazon quietly announced AWS Ethereum support, showing that major big tech companies have already warmed up to the decentralised ecosystem.

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