Crypto lender Matrixport seeks $100M funding despite lending crisis - Enancial

Bitmain-backed crypto lender Matrixport is the other half of a new funding round targeting a $100 million raise.

Matrixport, the cryptocurrency firm founded by Bitmain co-founder Wu Jihan, is in the process of raising $100 million in funding despite the ongoing crypto market crisis.

Lead investors have already committed $50 million for Matrixport’s new funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 25. The deal has yet to be finalized as Matrixport is still looking for investors for the other half of the round.

We’re excited and look forward to engaging with participants, on similar terms, in the other half of the #funding round.

Appreciate the trust and confidence our investors continue have in Team #Matrixport.@business https://t.co/DqQhsYucUy

— Matrixport (@realMatrixport) November 25, 2022

According to the company, the new round is part of Matrixport’s usual funding agenda. “Matrixport routinely engages with key stakeholders as part of its normal course of business, including investors keen to participate and enable our vision as a digital assets financial services provider,” the firm’s public relations head Ross Gan said.

Matrixport’s new funding comes a year after the firm conducted a $100 million Series C funding round conducted in August 2021, becoming a unicorn with a $1 billion valuation.

The fundraising was led by major global venture capital firms, including DST Global, C Ventures and K3 Ventures. Other contributors in the round included major industry investors like Tiger Global, Qiming Venture Partners, CE Innovation Capital and A&T Capital, alongside existing investors like Polychain, Dragonfly Capital, Lightspeed, IDG Capital and others.

According to Bloomberg data, Matrixport handles $5 billion of trades each month and has tens of billions of dollars of assets under management and custody. The firm reportedly employs close to 300 people.

Established in February 2019, Matrixport is one of the largest cryptocurrency lenders in Asia, offering a wide range of crypto services, including trading and custody. The company also offers cryptocurrency and stablecoin loans, as well as zero-cost loans with a 0% interest rate and liquidation protection.

Matrixport is one of the few crypto lending platforms that appear to have not been affected by the ongoing crisis of cryptocurrency lending. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, some of the biggest crypto lending platforms including Celsius and BlockFi have faced major issues this year due to the ongoing bear market and the associated crisis of cryptocurrency lending.

Wu’s crypto company also said that it wasn’t too much affected by the ongoing FTX contagion, reporting a few issues due to the crash of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange. On Nov. 11, Matrixport reported that 79 of its users suffered losses in the aftermath of FTX issues, adding that the affected products included the BTC Fixed Income Products and Victoria BTC Fund Products.

“We would need to emphasize that Matrixport’s products are subject to strict segregation from one another so that a single impacted product will not affect the other products as the underlying asset and fund flow are segregated,” the firm stated.