Image: © fox17/Stock.adobe.com
The round values the Mexican company at $2.2bn. It was co-led by Tiger Global, which has been ramping up its investment pace of late.
Investor cash keeps flowing into cryptocurrency start-ups, with exchange Bitso securing $250m in a round co-led by Tiger Global Management.
The significant round of funding for Bitso comes just five months after the start-up’s $62m Series B. The Mexican company is now valued at $2.2bn.
Coatue also led the round with participation from Paradigm, Bond & Valor Capital Group, QED, Pantera Capital and Kaszek.
Cryptocurrency businesses are very much in vogue at the moment, thanks to massive rallies in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile Coinbase’s recent stock market success has likely lit a fire under investors to find the next big crypto exchange to back.
Bitso is unlikely to challenge major players like Binance any time soon but it does have a growing foothold in the Latin American market. It has operations in its native Mexico and Argentina. Just last week it launched in Brazil and it is currently going through regulatory steps in Colombia.
According to the company, it has more than 2m users and in 2020 it processed more than $1.2bn in international payments. In recent years, crypto has proven popular in Latin America for remittances.
“The growth of the crypto ecosystem this year has been remarkable,” Bitso chief executive Daniel Vogel said. “It took Bitso six years to get its first million clients. Now less than 10 months later we have reached the 2m mark. People in Latin America are using this technology in their everyday lives.
“This round will be used to expand our capabilities, our product offering and to continue making crypto useful across Latin America.”
The deal marks another bumper investment for Tiger Global, which has been cutting cheques with many zeroes at the end since the start of the year and has ramped up its deployment of capital in its quest to back the next big thing. As well as cryptocurrency, it has been betting on food and grocery delivery.
Last month it closed a $6.7bn venture fund and yesterday (4 May) the Financial Times reported that the firm is raising yet another fund, this time at $10bn.
Among the companies that have benefited from the firm’s investment frenzy is Dublin’s Flipdish with a €40m investment.
