By Lucas Williams
`FTX, a popular crypto exchange, announced that they successfully raised $429 million in their most recent funding round. This raises the company’s value to $25 billion. On Thursday, the company, which is based in the Bahamas, explained that they raised the money from, wait for it, 69 investors. This included Sequoia, BlackRock, Singapore-based Temasek, and the Teachers’ Pension Plan Board in Ontario.
To be more specific, the company explained that it generated $420,690,000 in the most recent round of funding. In case you didn’t notice, the numbers ‘420’ and ’69’ are a nod to the very subtle and discreet meme culture.
This latest investment comes as a top up to the July’s event, which was the firm’s Series B funding round. It successfully generated a whopping $900 million, which raised the company’s value to an impressive $18 billion.
Currently, FTX is among the world’s biggest online currency exchanges. That means it’s fighting for a top spot against competitors like Kraken, Binance, and Coinbase. The exchange itself specializes in offering derivatives and helping investors trade on leverage. That means using borrowed finances to increase trade volumes.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, stated that he founded the company two years ago with the vision of developing a new and improved financial market. He went on to explain that now, he is channeling focus towards developing the firm’s reputation. The idea is to appeal to users as an innovative and trustworthy crypto exchange by constantly collaborating with regulatory authorities. Moreover, he said that they’re always looking for new opportunities to increase what they can offer digital investors.
The latest round is announced just a day after Bitcoin managed to pull through and hit a price high of over $66,000. At the same time, investors are celebrating the launch of the first ever US exchange–traded fund that will track Bitcoin futures. This is an impressive milestone that will take cryptocurrencies, especially flagship digital currency Bitcoin, deeper into Wall Street territory.
As of yet, Sam Bankman-Fried holds a different reputation as opposed to his counterparts in the traditional finance and investment sphere. Unlike their rigid and stiff personas, Bankman-Fried appeals to the tech-savvy youth that makes up a large chunk of the crypto fanbase. The fact that he’s young and looks so much like the rest of the group is what makes him somewhat a celebrity in crypto spheres.
But don’t let his appearance fool you, because he’s also the genius founder of Alameda Research. It’s a quantitative trading firm that has even made generous investments in various start-ups. Based on valuations by Forbes magazine, Sam Bankman-Fried holds an estimated value of $22.5 billion. This would make him the richest founder of a crypto-based firm.