The war chest of Binance.US continues to grow, as the American affiliate of the leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance added over $200 million in what is its first external funding since its inception. The round included participation of investors such as RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, Original Capital, VanEck, Circle Ventures, Gaingels, and Gold House. The pre-money valuation of the two-year-old Binance.US now stands at an enviable $4.5 billion.
The new dose of funding will enable Binance.US to offer new products and services such as DeFi, and an NFT shop (we may see some of the new features arrive in the market in the near term) and make mergers and acquisitions. Investments will also be made in marketing, its spot trading platform, and an increase in the number of its employees.
Not that its number is less. It is still young – being launched in 2019 – and it already has 100 people across its product and tech teams. There is still room for growth, and Binance.US aims to fill the gap by driving recruitments.
For those who do not know, Binance.US aims to expand its services across all US states and territories – which is more vast than the current 45 US states and territories it is available in today. It offers crypto spot trading services against 72 crypto assets to retail and institutional clients, allowing direct trading between buyers and sellers without them having to pay any transaction fees.
Some of the other services provided by Binance.US include an OTC (Over-the-counter) desk and institutional-based services such as trading APIs.
“When you look at the general research of who is actually using crypto, it disproportionately skews to people of color, LGBT, and Latinos. That is precisely why during this fundraising round, we prioritized the inclusion of mission-driven funds in our cap table,” said Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder, who added that he was proud of how the round was constructed and what it portended for the future of Binance.US.
This will undoubtedly help Binance.US in overtaking rivals such as Coinbase and remain ahead of others such as FTX.US and Gemini. It had a trading volume of over $9 billion in March, while the same for Coinbase came at over $81 billion for the same period. The amounts for FTX.US and Gemini (in March) were over $5 billion and nearly $4 billion respectively.
