In China’s popular online-streaming industry, virtual gift-giving is big. You can send your favorite live performer anything from a rose for 5 yuan (80 cents) to a space rocket for 500 yuan.
The present is just a symbol, but the money is real — and that’s what’s made Kuaishou Technology so successful.
The ByteDance Ltd. rival has become the biggest livestreaming platform for virtual gifts, with more paying monthly users than any other in the world. The firm, which takes a cut of the tips fans give to performers, raised $5.4 billion in Hong Kong in the biggest internet initial public offering since Uber Technologies Inc. in 2019, terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg show.