South Africa’s VALR raises $50m in Series B at a $240m valuation

The South Africa-based cryptocurrency exchange VALR closed a $50m Series B financing round. It was led by Pantera Capital.

Announcing VALR’s $50m Series B — Africa’s largest ever crypto funding round

Proud moment for our team
Proud moment for Africa

All thanks to you

❤️ VALRhttps://t.co/NplrsraExZ

— VALR (@VALRdotcom) March 1, 2022

The round also included investments from Alameda Research, Cadenza, CMT Digital, Coinbase Ventures, Distributed Global, GSR, Third Prime, Avon Ventures, Bittrex and 4Di Capital.

The round, the largest in the region, valued the platform at $240 million. The figure is tenfold higher than in July 2020, when the firm raised $3.4 million from BitMEX operator the 100x Group and others.

According to the company, since 2019, 250,000 retail and 500 institutional clients have conducted trades on the platform worth $7.5 billion. VALR offers trading across 69 trading pairs of digital assets.

The funds will be directed to expand into India and other African countries, hire staff, and broaden the product lineup.

VALR plans to attract new customers among banks, insurers and hedge funds.

Earlier, the government of South Africa proposed to ban pension funds from investing in cryptocurrencies.

In September 2021, the head of the country’s Reserve Bank, Lesetja Kganyago refused to recognise Bitcoin as a currency.

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