More mainstream enterprise capital companies are leaping on the crypto bandwagon as buyers more and more contemplate bitcoin an investable asset, regardless of the current huge value drops of some main cryptocurrencies. Amber Group, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency buying and selling startup, mentioned on Monday it has raised $100 million in a Series B funding spherical at a pre-money valuation of $1 billion.
The newest valuation is ten occasions that of the corporate’s Series A closed in 2019, a $28 million spherical that counted Coinbase Ventures as one among its buyers. Also notably, Amber’s Series B financing was bankrolled by a listing of high-profile monetary and VC companies, together with China Renaissance, which led the spherical, and Tiger Brokers, Tiger Global Management, Arena Holdings, Tru Arrow Partners, Sky9 Capital, DCM Ventures, and Gobi Partners.
Its previous buyers Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Blockchain.com additionally participated within the spherical.
In May, Babel Finance, one other crypto asset supervisor based mostly out of Hong Kong, secured $40 million in funding from a lot of big-name institutional buyers, together with Amber’s investor Tiger Global.
Founded by a bunch of former funding bankers of their twenties, Amber initially got down to apply machine studying algorithms to quantitative buying and selling however pivoted in 2017 to crypto when the staff noticed spikes in digital foreign money’s buying and selling volumes. The startup now serves each institutional and particular person buyers, providing them algorithmic buying and selling, digital market-making, high-frequency buying and selling, OTC buying and selling, borrowing and lending, derivatives, amongst different merchandise.
The agency launched its cell app within the third quarter of 2020, widening its scope from institutional purchasers to retail shoppers. It mentioned the buying and selling app has up to now amassed over 100,000 registered customers.
Amber has been worthwhile since its inception, in accordance with its co-founder and CEO Michael Wu, with annualized revenues of $500 million based mostly on figures from January to April 2021.
The startup has seen “record months over the past quarter across both client flow and on-exchange market-making volumes,” mentioned Wu, and it now accounts for “2-3% of total trading volumes in major spot and derivative markets.” Its cumulative buying and selling volumes have doubled from $250 billion because the starting of the 12 months to over $500 billion. Altogether, it manages round $1.5 billion in buying and selling capital that varies based mostly on BTC and ETH costs.
Amber has over 330 workers worldwide throughout Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, and Vancouver. The proceeds from its Series B will go in direction of international enlargement.
