VALR, a crypto exchange in South Africa, has raised $50 million in a Series B equity funding round
South African crypto exchange VALR has raised $50 million in a Series B equity funding round, marking the largest funding ever for an African crypto exchange.
South African exchange raises $50M in Africa’s largest funding round
With this latest round of funding, VALR’s valuation has grown to $240 million, a 10-fold increase since raising $3.4 million in a Series A round in July 2020. The round was funded by VCs. Pantera Capital, Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, and a few others.
VALR claims to have processed over $7.5 billion in transaction volume since 2019 from over 250,000 retail customers and 500 global institutional users. It currently has around 420 BTC ($18 million) in trading volume from 69 trading pairs.
Funds from this round will be used to expand VALR’s operations to other emerging African markets and India, introduce more products to users, and hire more talent.
VALR CEO and co-founder Farzam Ehsani said in a Mar. 1 official statement shared with Cointelegraph that “Society’s financial tools should unite us, not divide us.” He added:
“VALR is helping to build a financial system that recognizes the oneness of the human race. There is no longer any room for doubt regarding the impact crypto assets are having on our global financial system.”
Ehsani also expects to inflate the number of institutional customers such as banks and insurance providers that use VALR’s platform to provide the crypto infrastructure they may need in the future.
“Crypto assets will become more and more pivotal to all our lives. VALR is here to help bridge our customers from the old financial system to the new”, Ehsani said.
Despite the chaotic crypto market so far from 2022, investments in crypto projects have not slowed down at all. On February 27, the Korean government announced a commitment of $187 million to build the national Metaverse, and The Graph (GRT) opened a $205 million fund on February 17 designed to designed to attract developers to its platform.
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