Should Coinbase, Binance Be Worried About FTX’s $400 Million Funding?

In the latest developments, cryptocurrency exchange FTX raised $400 million for its US arm from various investment groups which elevated the total valuation of the company to place it at $8 billion.

FTX Plans Its Future

Reuters reported that the Series A funding came from other crypto investment firms such as Paradigm and Multicoin Capital.

After being launched merely a year and a half ago, the cryptocurrency exchange’s US arm has managed to place itself among the top 15 biggest exchanges in the world. FTX US handles over $270 million in volume on a daily basis.

On the announcement, FTX US President Brett Harrison stated:

“…we are officially establishing ourselves on the stage of the largest competitors of cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S.”

The company aims to stretch its reaches soon as it intends on using the $400 million raised funds for expanding its staff and workforce along with focusing on increasing its user base, investing and acquiring advantageous offerings as well as looking into new businesses.

Just 3 months ago, the company acquired LedgerX, a regulated crypto Futures, and Options trading platform to further build upon their services.

Additionally, this isn’t the first big funding round for the company as last year FTX managed to raise up to $420.69 million from investors like Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with 67 other investors.

This Series B-1 fundraise placed the total valuation of the company at $25 billion.

FTX US is one of the only few US-based cryptocurrency exchanges and is already competing with the likes of Binance and Coinbase. Funding as such could propel the exchange to become a worthy contender for the top spot.

The Competitors

Binance itself has been making efforts in tapping the more mainstream audiences across the globe. Recently, the cryptocurrency exchange struck a 5-year deal with Argentina’s national soccer team as a sponsor.

Coinbase on the other hand recently closed a deal with Mastercard to enable its users to purchase NFTs using Mastercard debit and credit cards.

So it’s safe to say that this will be an interesting race.