NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Money Partners Group fuels Bitcoin exchange Kraken with Series B investment
One of the world’s largest Bitcoin and Ethereum exchanges Kraken (Payward, Inc.) today announced raising money in its Series B funding round. The full amount of the deal was not disclosed it does include an investment from Money Partners Group, a Tokyo-based firm with a market cap of over $260 million USD (or ¥29 billion).
This announcement follows other Series B news for Kraken in February when SBI Investment, a Japanese venture capital group, made a “multi-million” dollar investment in the exchange to lead the Series B round. SBI Investment’s parent company, SBI Holding also has broad stakes with investments in over 200 companies operating in 20 countries including markets in financial services, asset management and biotechnology generating over $2 billion in revenue a year.
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said, “This investment from Money Partners Group is more validation that our long-game approach to the digital asset exchange business has been the right strategy. Established players in financial services want a partner that knows what they’re doing and delivers — that’s why they choose Kraken.”
Kraken’s established place in the Bitcoin ecosystem also makes the company a juicy investment. Earlier this year, Kraken acquired two other Bitcoin exchanges: New York-based Coinsetter, Inc. and Canada-based Cavirtex. With these acquisitions, the exchange has been expanding its reach out of Europe (where Kraken did most of its business) into the United States and Canada.
“Our new relationship with Money Partners Group is a huge win for Bitcoin and Ethereum awareness and adoption around the world,” Powell added. “The results we will achieve together will show other financial institutions why they should embrace digital assets and blockchain technologies.”
Since acquiring Coinsetter and Cavirtex, Kraken has claimed a 400 percent rise in new client accounts (compared to Q4 2015).
The year 2016 has also seen extraordinary growth for Kraken with a ten-times increase in XBT/USD (Bitcoin to USD exchanges), a thirty-times increase in XBT/CAD and a fifteen-times increase in XBT/JPY. In the same time span the price of Ethereum has skyrocketed and trading of ETH has increased by five-times across all supported regions.
Featured image credit: http://pixabay.com/en/dollar-currency-money-us-dollar-499481/
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
