By
Mayowa Adebajo
February 19th, 2024
The growth of the company is backed by the increasing demand for digital currency assets by retail investors in the past year.
Crypto payments infrastructure service provider, MoonPay is set to undergo its first venture capital funding, with plans to raise as much as $400 million. According to The Information, which cites two people familiar with the matter, the funding round will be co-led by Tiger Global Management and Coatue Management, and will effectively place the company at a $3.4 billion valuation.
MoonPay was established in 2019 by a team of just two young entrepreneurs, co-founders Ivan Soto-Wright and Victor Faramond. The underlying motive of the founders is to power the global adoption of digital currencies, by offering easier access to acquire cryptocurrencies. Today, MoonPay’s payment gateway lets users purchase digital assets with traditional payment options such as debit or credit cards, as well as with bank transfers.
MoonPay currently counts the likes of OpenSea, Bitcoin.com, Trust Wallet, ABRA, ZenGo, and Spot as its clients; its growth numbers over the years have been highly impressive. The active users of MoonPay’s services currently top $5 million, atop a 1,700% growth since inception. The MoonPay platform currently supports over 80 different digital currencies and tokens, and it has facilitated over $2 billion worth of crypto delivered thus far.
Should the proposed funding round be confirmed by the firm, it will position it as one of the few cryptocurrency outfits that attained the unicorn valuation status within just 3 years of establishment. The growth of the company is backed by the increasing demand for digital currency assets by retail investors in the past year. Its support to power Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplaces like OpenSea has also expanded the overall use case of the outfit.
Crypto Payments Funding Is an Affair that Surpasses MoonPay
Blockchain technology and innovations in the digital currency ecosystem are arguably one of the biggest trends of the 21st century. A lack of positioning by venture capital firms can make them lose a golden opportunity to be a part of one of the supposedly largest industries in the coming years.
A realization of the potentials in the growing industry has stirred many investors to back crypto payments firms like MoonPay. Q3 2021 has notably witnessed more venture funding for crypto outfits than the overall funding the industry received back in the 2020 fiscal year. Amongst the notable mentions in terms of venture capital funding include the $155 million funding Blockdaemon raised from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 amongst other investors.
Besides direct investment from private investors, a lot of digital currency outfits have also been exploring capital raises from the public as many are considering a move into the stock market. Beginning with Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) which went public through the direct listing method back in April, other crypto brokerage firms, including Kraken and eToro are also exploring various avenues to go public in the United States.