FTX Exchange Fetches Largest Funding in Crypto History At $18 Billion Valuation

FTX digital asset exchange has closed the biggest funding round in the history of digital assets domain with a fundraise of nine hundred million dollars in its series B funding round. The funding round witnessed participation from sixty investors with lead funding coming from the likes of Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Third Point, Softbank, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and many others.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of the crypto exchange said,

“The primary goal of the raise was to [find] strategic allies who can help FTX grow its brand, but the capital itself will be primarily used for acquisitions, any of those are businesses where we think we have a lot of value to add, implementing the tools that we’ve built, and frankly, in some cases, us implementing what they’ve built.”

The latest funding round also makes CEO Bankman Fried the wealthiest digital asset billionaire with his overall worth surging to over sixteen billion dollars after getting over seven billion dollars from the deal because of his fifty eight percent stake in the company.

Notably, Binance also had some equity holding in the company which it sold during this funding round. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance told Forbes that the sale of stocks was an investment cycle and they continue to be on good terms with the promptly growing digital currency derivatives platform.

He said,

“We’ve seen tremendous growth from them, we’re very happy with that but we’ve exited completely. We’re still friends but we no longer have any equity relationship.”

Notably, as compared to other renowned crypto exchanges, FTX began quite late in the crypto space, as it started its operations in 2019. Nevertheless, the digital asset platform has grown to become a major Binance competitor.