On Monday, crypto exchange platform FTX announced that it raised $400 million in a Series C financing round at a new valuation of $32 billion. The funding, among other things, proves that there is still interest in the cryptocurrency sector irrespective of recent happenings. According to the exchange, all investors in its US affiliate called FTX US including Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global participated in the funding.
Based in the Bahamas and founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, FTX is one of the world’s biggest exchange platforms and is one of the market leaders in the cryptocurrency space rivalling Binance and Coinbase. The latest funding is FTX’s in the past three months. In total, FTX has raised $2 billion in funding.
The exchange platform doesn’t offer trading options in the US; this offering is provided through its affiliate in the US called FTX US. Just last week, FTX US became valued at $8 billion after raising $400 million.
The crypto market experienced extreme fluctuations last year and is currently experiencing a downtime. Irrespective of this, FTX was able to raise almost half a billion dollars in funding, which is an indicator that the crypto space is still catching the attention of a good number of people and investors. According to FTX’s co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, “I think we’re not entering a long term crypto winter. There have been changes in expectations of interest rates, and that’s been moving crypto markets. But it’s been moving markets more generally as well”.
FTX has been quizzed about a public listing. The CEO said that “It’s something we’ve been talking about. I’m not sure whether we will. I could see it happening, I could see it not happening. We don’t feel like we have any particular need to do it”.
He also added that the company may take steps of preparation just in case a public listing ends up as something it’d want to do.
For now, FTX will be focusing on acquiring the necessary licenses needed to stay above regulators’ scrutiny and to be able to thrive in certain countries.
According to the exchange, between October (when it had its last funding round where it raised funds at a valuation of $25 million) and now, its user base has increased by 60 percent while daily trading volumes increasing by 40 percent to an average of $14 billion.
The company recently set up a fund of $2 billion aimed at investing in crypto startups. It is also licensing its software to other businesses in fintech and gaming.
With the new funds, FTX plans on developing existing offerings and introducing new ones. It is also going to place increased attention on its marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).