FTX US Market Value Hits $8 Billion After $400 million Funding Raise

On Wednesday, cryptocurrency exchange FTX US announced a $8 billion value after raising $400 million in its first funding round from investors including Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

FTX US Taps $8 Billion Valuation

According to Reuters, FTX.US has raised $400 million in its first-ever investment round. This comes after the exchange, a Binance competitor, suffered huge losses. Multinational investment managers such as Japan’s SoftBank Group, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, and crypto investment firms Paradigm and Multicoin Capital participated in the Series A funding round.

The Information reported in December that FTX was planning to raise $1.5 billion more across its global and US operations, valuing FTX at $32 billion and FTX US at $8 billion. While the latter valuation has subsequently been confirmed, FTX has yet to announce additional funding outside of the United States division.

FTX.US led by former Citadel Securities executive President Brett Harrison is one of numerous startups riding the retail trading wave to crypto riches, Since its beginning, the company has increased its user base to over 1 million people, with volumes expected to reach $67 billion by 2021.

FTX.US competes on a global scale. Coinbase, the main US crypto exchange, has a monthly volume of over $100 billion. In the third quarter of 2021, FTX.US, which was founded in 2020, had a daily transaction volume of approximately $360 million.

ETH/USD trades at $2,500. Source: TradingView

“We’ve grown tremendously from nothing, from relative obscurity into the fourth or fifth largest exchange in the U.S. in a very short period of time,” said Harrison, “whilst going up against a very competitive landscape of Coinbase, Kraken—these large, 10-year incumbents.”

Previously, FTX US acquired Ledger Holdings, the parent firm of LedgerX, in an attempt to begin providing derivatives to consumers in the United States. In addition, the company intends to build an NFT platform.

FTXUS’ parent company, FTX, is one of the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges, with a valuation of $25 billion.

Related article | Crypto Exchange FTX Raises $900M At An $18B Valuation, Breaks From Binance

Incredible Growth For Crypto Startups

Since last year, the cryptocurrency industry has attracted a significant amount of investment. Several crypto businesses, including DapperLabs, Sky Mavis, and Moon Pay, achieved unicorn status when the market valuation surpassed $3 trillion. Bloomberg also reported that venture capital groups invested a record-breaking $30 billion in cryptocurrency in 2021. Surprisingly, a large portion of the funding, approximately $7.2 billion, came from US venture capital.

FTX itself announced a $2 billion venture fund early this month, following in the footsteps of a16z and Paradigm who also launched their investment funds earlier.

While the cryptocurrency market has lost more than $1 trillion in market value in recent months, Harrison is unconcerned about the impact on FTX US’s growth.

Harrison said,

“Canonical wisdom on crypto Twitter is during downturns, during slowdowns, during bear markets, it’s a good time to build. Our plan is to keep building out our product set, keep improving user interface, to keep adding new kinds of offerings on the exchange, like derivatives, like stocks. And we think that’s going to prepare us for the inevitable next upturn in the crypto markets in general and equity global markets as a whole.”

Related article | Why Crypto Exchange FTX CEO Won’t Rule Out Buying Goldman Sachs And CME Group

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