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Just three months after closing a record US$1 billion series B, the two-year-old cryptocurrency exchange is now valued at US$25 billion.
Fast facts
- The US$420,690,000 Series B-1 funding round saw the participation of 69 investors, with prominent names the lineup, including Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, via its Teachers’ Innovation Platform, Singapore’s state-owned investment firm Temasek, Sequoia Capital, Sea Capital, IVP, ICONIQ Growth, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
- FTX, founded by 29-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, bills itself as being built by traders for traders. It offers a wide variety of investment products and services including derivatives, options and volatility products, tokenized stocks, prediction markets, leveraged tokens and an OTC desk.
- The company says it has grown significantly since its US$1 billion Series B round in July, with the number of users growing 48% and average trade volume increasing 75% to average US$14 billion per day in daily volume. The Financial Times reported Bankman-Fried as having said earlier this year that FTX was on track to make US$1bn of profit in 2021.
- “We are focused on establishing FTX as a trustworthy and innovative exchange by regularly engaging with regulators around the world, and constantly seeking opportunities to enhance our offerings for digital asset investors,” said FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried in a statement.
- Earlier this year, FTX US — FTX’s U.S. affiliate — acquired Ledger Holdings Inc., parent company of LedgerX, a digital currency futures and options exchange regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). FTX has also jumped onto the non-fungible token (NFT) bandwagon and launched a marketplace in September.
- Originally based in Hong Kong, FTX recently moved its corporate headquarters to the Bahamas. Bankman-Fried told Forkast.News in an interview that the decision was motivated by the Bahamian government’s forward-looking stance on crypto coupled with the island nation’s lack of Covid-related quarantine rules, which allows for easy travel.
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