Billionaire Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Exchange FTX Lands $25 Billion Valuation And $421 Million In New Funding

Billionaire Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Exchange FTX Lands $25 Billion Valuation And $421 Million In New Funding

Share to Linkedin Fresh off a massive funding round this summer, FTX Trading, one of the world's busiest cryptocurrency exchanges, has raised another $421 million in new investments, the firm announced Thursday morning, boosting its valuation to a staggering $25 billion as bitcoin's resurgence lifts the recently volatile crypto market to new highs. Sam Bankman-Fried, chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, listens ... [+] during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami on June 5, 2021. Bahamas-based FTX's latest funding round drew participation from 69 investors, including Iconiq Growth, Tiger Global and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. The firm also disclosed investment firm Temasek participated in its July funding round, lifting the amount of cash raised during that round to a record $1 billion; at the time, the company was valued at $18 billion—15 times its valuation one year prior. FTX said the new funds are meant to help the exchange expand into new jurisdictions and build on its current offerings, which recently included the acquisition of a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. Bankman-Fried, the 29-year-old billionaire who founded FTX in 2017, has previously said he sees "an enormous amount of potential growth" in the United States, where the company has