Crypto derivatives exchange FTX has raised money at an $18 billion valuation. Investors included SoftBank Group, Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia Capital, the Paul Tudor Jones family, Alan Howard, among others.
The series B fundraising round of $900 million values FTX at $18 billion. It is also the largest private equity round in the crypto industry’s history.
Ribbit Capital, Paradigm, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global Capital, Multicoin, VanEck, and Circle also participated in the round that included more than 60 investors.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) told Forbes Binance has recently given up its equity stake in FTX. In December 2019, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, invested an undisclosed sum in FTX. “We’ve exited completely,” CZ said, “we’re still friends but we no longer have any equity relationship.”
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told The Wall Street Journal that FTX plans to use its new funding to expand into regulated markets. Potentially, that could include acquisitions of companies licensed to do financial activities in various countries, he said, “we’re looking to get licenses where we can.”
On whether FTX would go public, Bankman-Fried told Forbes that there’s no “ticking clock on our need to go public.”
HK-Based Fusang to Launch IPO
On the other hand, Hong Kong FinTech company Fusang Corp is launching its IPO. The company’s shares are directly recorded on the blockchain, as Blockchain-Native Shares. They will be publicly listed on the FUSANG Exchange, open for global investors to directly trade.
The IPO is launching at the end of the third quarter, with the listing in the fourth quarter. The company also announced new board advisors including Vivien Khoo, who previously served as the COO and Interim CEO at 100x, parent group of BitMEX.
Additionally, DeFi product powerhouse Coin98 has raised $11.25 million in a strategic round. Led by Hashed and Spartan Group, the round saw the participation of Genesis Block Ventures, ParaFi Capital, IOSG Ventures, among others.
Coin98 positions itself as the most potent DeFi Gateway, supporting people to access numerous dApps on different blockchains. Its flagship product, cross-chain Coin98 Wallet, has quickly grown in Southeast Asia, with more than 300,000 users.
This April, Alameda Research, also founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, invested $4 million in Coin98 Finance. Also, Coin98 Ventures runs a joint Solana Ecosystem Fund with the Solana Foundation targeting the Asia market.
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