South African cryptocurrency exchange VALR has successfully closed a $50m fundraising round in a Series B funding round. This is the largest funding round an African cryptocurrency company has ever completed.
Africa’s largest crypto funding round
The information was confirmed in a recent statement posted on VALR’s website. The Johannesburg, South Africa-based cryptocurrency exchange has confirmed that it has closed a Series B funding round raising $50 million.
Announcing VALR’s $50m Series B – Africa’s largest ever crypto funding round
Proud moment for our team
Proud moment for AfricaAll thanks to you
❤️ VALRhttps://t.co/NplrsraExZ
– VALR (@VALRdotcom) March 1, 2022
This Series B round was led by Pantera Capital. Other participants include the usual candidates: Alameda Research, Cadenza, CMT Digital, Coinbase Ventures and many others.
This is officially the largest funding round ever in the history of the African cryptocurrency industry. This brings VALR’s valuation to $240 million, a nice 10-fold increase following its first Series A round. At that time, in July 2020, the company had already raised $3.4 million.
According to the data shared by VALR in its press release, the platform has more than 250,000 individual and 500 institutional clients worldwide. With 60 listed assets, the exchange handles a daily volume of about 460 BTC, or nearly $20 million.
One goal, develop cryptocurrencies in Africa
This freshly raised capital will mainly be used to expand VALR’s business across the African continent. But that’s not all, the company also wants to discover new emerging markets, notably India. More generally, VALR wants to offer more products and services to its growing global customer base.
“We are already helping VALR customers enter the cryptocurrency world from the traditional financial system using their USD or ZAR, and we are very excited that this round of funding will allow us to serve many more in Africa and globally,” said Farzam Ehsani, CEO and co-founder of VALR.
In addition, VALR plans to onboard many other institutions in the traditional financial system. Specifically, the South African company intends to attract the largest banks, insurers and hedge funds, in order to help them build the infrastructure needed to bring more people into the cryptocurrency market.
“VALR is extremely well positioned to emerge as a future-proof financial institution that offers its clients asset allocation capabilities in crypto and other global markets,” explained Kumar Dandapani, founder of Cadenza Capital Management
One thing is for sure for VALR and its co-founder, “there is no longer any room for doubt about the impact of crypto assets on our global financial system.” According to Ehsani, the world is on the verge of a huge financial upheaval, of which crypto-currencies will be the pivotal point. In this sense, VALR is here to “help our clients transition from the old financial system to the new one. “
