Johnny Lyu, cofounder and CEO of KuCoin
Crypto exchange KuCoin announced on Tuesday that it had raised $150 million in a funding round led by Jump Crypto, the investment arm of U.S. proprietary trading firm Jump Trading.
Other investors who participated in the round include Circle Ventures, the venture capital vehicle of stablecoin issuer Circle, as well as investment firms IDG Capital and Matrix Partners. The fresh capital values KuCoin at $10 billion, the company said.
KuCoin said it will use the funds to expand beyond centralized trading services and grow its presence in Web3, the next generation of the internet that runs on blockchains. The Seychelles-based company will boost its investment portfolio of crypto wallets, play-to-earn games, decentralized finance and NFT platforms. The capital will also be used to enhance KuCoin’s ethereum-based public blockchain.
“The vote of confidence from prominent investors, including Jump Crypto and Circle Ventures, solidifies our vision that one day everyone will be with crypto,” cofounder and CEO Johnny Lyu said in a statement. “KuCoin is built for all classes of investors, and we believe these new investors and partners will contribute to making KuCoin synonymous with a reliable and trustworthy gateway into crypto space.”
KuCoin’s latest funding round comes as the crypto market continues to plunge into a bear market this week amid a widespread selloff in stocks and other assets. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, on Tuesday saw its price drop to a low since July last year, according to tracker Coingecko. The digital coin stood at roughly $31,000, down more than 50% from its peak price of $68,000 last November.
KuCoin was established in Singapore in 2017 as a crypto exchange. The company has since expanded its platform to include lending and NFT trading, as well as an investment arm that focuses on crypto and blockchain projects. KuCoin said it is now serving 18 million users in more than 200 countries and regions. It is the sixth-largest crypto exchange in the world in terms of trade volume, according to Coingecko, with $4.7 billion in spot trades over a 24-hour period as of Tuesday.
KuCoin was the victim of one of the biggest crypto heists in history. In 2020, the exchange reported the theft of about $280 million worth of bitcoin and other crypto tokens. The figure represented more than half of all cryptocurrencies stolen that year, according to blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis.
