Tim Draper, Y Combinator and Pantera Invest in New Exchange

The Globe crypto-derivatives exchange raised $3 million in seed funding with backing from Pantera Capital, Y Combinator, Tim Draper’s Draper Dragon Fund, and Wavemaker Partners.

Globe is registered in the Seychelles and is based in London, with a launch expected in the coming weeks.

The platform is aimed at serving institutional clients and will offer them perpetual contracts on Bitcoin, Ethereum, the Bitcoin volatility index, and DeFi tokens. Trading on the exchange will be unavailable to U.S. residents.

According to Globe CEO James West, the exchange uses its own order-matching and risk engine called Thor, which should compete with Nasdaq in terms of order processing speed and throughput.

Globe also plans to cooperate with institutional liquidity providers, offering direct integration and a standard set of features of traditional futures exchanges.

“We are witnessing a wave of interest in crypto assets from large banks, fintech companies and asset managers. Globe has built a platform and products that these sophisticated players need and expect,” — Pol Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital, said in a CoinDesk comment.

James West noted that Globe’s launch would come amid regulatory issues faced by the BitMEX exchange, a rapid surge in the price of Bitcoin, and rising popularity of the DeFi sector.

The combination of these factors gives him reason to believe that Globe could become a reliable platform through which fresh institutional capital will flow into cryptocurrencies.

Chainalysis analysts explained in a recent report that Bitcoin’s rise to above $18,000 was driven by the insatiable appetite of institutional investors.

Subscribe to Forklog news on Facebook!