Cryptocurrency trading firm Amber Group has entered the unicorn club with a $100m Series B round led by China Renaissance.
Other firms contributing to the cash injection included Tiger Brokers, Tiger Global Management, Arena Holdings, Tru Arrow Partners, Sky9 Capital, DCM Ventures and Gobi Partners.
With operations in Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul and Vancouver, Amber Group said it plans to use the funding to expand its global operations. The cash injection will also be used to develop market solutions for crypto investors and companies.
The company — backed by Coinbase in Series A investment round — offers algorithmic trading, high-frequency trading and over-the-counter trading to a deep roster of 500 institutional clients. However, its primary focus is to engage with wealthy investors with an aim to provide a “private banking experience to the everyday customer.” Some of its products are electronic market-making and high-frequency trading.
The company now has over $1bn in assets under management, with more than $500bn worth of cumulative trade volumes. In terms of national trade volume, Amber Group ranks 21st among global exchanges, according to BitMEX data. Amber’s assets topped $530m in 2020, representing a 275% increase from the prior year.
Amber CEO, Michael Wu, said, “We’ve had record months over the past quarter across both client flow and on-exchange market-making volumes,” and it now accounts for “2-3% of total trading volumes in major spot and derivative markets.” He added that its “trading volumes have doubled from $250bn since the beginning of the year to over $500bn.” The firm has been profitable since its inception and is on track to register $500m in revenue by the end of the year.
Cryptocurrency exchanges and service providers are in high demand in the venture capital world. Investors have poured in $14bn into such firms in the second quarter of 2021 in addition to Coinbase IPO in April.
Just this month, Solana Labs finalized a $314m private token sale, PayPal and Salesforce contributed $14m to TRM Labs and DeFi exchange dYdX raised $65m through a Series C fundraiser.
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