Tag: ftxus

Asia's SoftBank and Temasek Join to Fund FTX US

FTX US reached an $8 billion valuation after receiving $400 million from Asian investment giants SoftBank Group and Temasek Holdings in its first round of funding.

The Japanese technology investment giant and the Singapore state holding company were joined by Paradigm, Multicoin Capital, Tribe Capital, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board and others for the series A funding.

“What this raise means to us is that we are officially establishing ourselves on the stage of the largest competitors of cryptocurrency exchanges in the US and signalling to the world that we are going to continue to expand very rapidly,” FTX US president Brett Harrison said.

FTX US said it intends to use the funds to grow its user base, market and launch new business lines such as the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.

“This raise will allow us to focus heavily on user acquisition, bolster our derivatives business, seek out strategic acquisitions, and hire the best talent,” FTX US President Brett Harrison tweeted.

According to PitchBook, venture capital firms invested $30 billion in crypto in 2021, and the cryptocurrency market surpassed $3 trillion in November. Following this venture capital are increasingly looking for robust ways to invest in the crypto industry.

Blockchain.News reported citing Bloomberg that more funds have been invested in the cryptocurrency industry in 2021 than in the past 10 years combined.

Chicago-based FTX US was launched in 2020 and its main competitors are leading crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance. The company is said to have had an average daily volume of about $360 million in the third quarter. Its users increased by 52% quarter over quarter.

The crazy skyrocketing price of digital assets in 2021 has led to the popularity of crypto-related projects, such as blockchain game development, NFT projects, and several other experimental projects that are seeking funds, according to Blockchain.News report.

In December 2021, FTX US was able to grab a number of sports sponsorship deals.

According to a December 15, 2021, report by Blockchain.News, FTX Derivatives Exchange inked a global sponsorship deal with professional NBA basketball team Golden State Warriors, a move that will provide FTX brand presence throughout the team’s stadium called the ‘Chase Center’.

FTX CEO Says Company Set to Spend Billions on Acquisitions: Bloomberg

Sam Bankman-Fried said his company is awash with excess liquidity and drawing on this, FTX Derivatives exchange is set to make a number of strategic acquisitions moving forward.

As contained in an interview with Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried said the company, now valued at over $32 billion following a $400 million funding round in January this year, has excess liquidity through which it is choosing to say it can be viewed from an acquisition angle.

“FTX is a profitable company,” he said in the interview. “You can look at the amount that we’ve raised over the last year or two — it’s a few billion dollars. That gives maybe a sense of where we are in terms of cash that was explicitly viewed from a potential acquisition angle.”

As is the deal or trend with many crypto trading platforms around today, acquisitions of smaller firms are not uncommon. These acquisitions are financed by money, and Bankman Fried is both a co-founder and the exchange’s Chief Executive Officer. By putting funds where his mouth is, Bankman Fried recently took a 7.6% position in the commission-free stock trading platform, Robinhood Markets Inc.

The Robinhood backing complements the acquisition of LedgerX, a fully regulated and licensed startup by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to offer derivative products. While FTX will still pursue the age-long style of building out its most coveted products, it believes adding new offshoots can help its massive growth push faster.

“It’s always something that we’re going to be open to and keeping our ears to the ground on,” Bankman-Fried.

Beyond acquisitions, FTX is making a whole lot of bold moves in the global arena as it is inking several partnerships and sponsorship deals that are largely helping to bolster its business optics across the board. While FTX’s acquisition spree has been confirmed, it will come as no surprise if other mainstream competitors follow suit.

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