Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is one of the newest digital currency platforms out there, but its size, scope, and popularity just keep growing. It’s been announced that the exchange now bears a valuation exceeding $32 billion at the time of writing thanks to a new funding round that occurred earlier in the week, suggesting investors continue to pour their money into this industry despite the regular price dips we’ve been witnessing.
FTX Is Headed to the Top of the Ladder
Based in the Bahamas, FTX has only been around since 2019, yet the funding round it completed on Monday saw the company raise a whopping $400 million through a Series C funding round. This was the company’s third official fundraiser in less than a year. The exchange is popular for offering tools like spot trading, and it has since become one of the globe’s largest digital trading platforms for crypto fans.
At press time, FTX does not offer trading services to customers in the United States. However, it boasts a subsidiary known as FTX U.S. that traders from America can utilize to buy, sell, and hold crypto. The latest fundraiser saw several institutional investors hopping aboard including Temasek from Singapore.
Sam-Bankman Fried – the CEO and co-founder of the exchange – recently sat down in an interview and discussed the prospects of a potential crypto winter that may be heading our way. Several analysts are worried that 2022 is going to bear heavy resemblance to 2018 given how much crypto assets have dropped in the last few weeks. Bitcoin, for example, is down more than 40 percent since hitting its new all-time high of approximately $68,000 per unit in November.
However, Fried isn’t worried, and he doesn’t think the present damage done is going to last. He says:
I think we’re not entering a long-term crypto winter. There have been changes in expectations of interest rates, and that’s been moving crypto markets, but it’s been moving markets more generally as well.
Given how strong his company has become and how well people have been reacting to it, Fried was asked if he’s planning to follow in Coinbase’s footsteps and go public in the future. Coinbase made history last April when it became the first digital currency exchange to begin trading on the Nasdaq.
Will There Be an IPO?
Right now, Fried feels that this option is very much up in the air. He commented:
It’s something we’ve been talking about. I’m not sure whether we will. I could see it happening, I could see it not happening. We don’t feel like we have any particular need to do it.
While he is not sure if the company is planning to take this route, he says that executives will likely remain prepared should this option ever present itself as valid and doable.
