Bitso, Latin America’s most significant cryptocurrency website, revealed today that it had secured $250 million in Series C funding. The round, co-led by hedge fund venture firm Tiger Global and giant Coatue, values the business at $2.2 billion, rendering it one of the region’s biggest fintech and its first crypto unicorn. Valor Capital Group, BOND, QED, Pantera Capital, Kaszek and Paradigm are among the other investors in the round.
Bitso collected a $62 million Series B round in December 2020 at an unspecified valuation. Bitso co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel states that the fund would be used to offer local people with links to extend operations and cryptocurrency.
Daniel, the CEO, also added that they want to make sure that people in the country profit from having connections to these global financial systems that are being developed on top of the blockchain.
The Mexico City-based firm, established in 2014, provides various cryptocurrency goods and services to over 2 million customers in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The Bitso App lets customers to sell, transfer, purchase, and acquire bitcoin and eight other cryptocurrencies; Bitso Company, a suite of cross-border items for local businesses; Bitso Alpha, a professional-grade crypto trading platform; and is among them.
The firm appears to have more than a 95% market share in Mexico and more than a 60% market share in Argentina. Colombian regulators officially selected Bitso as one of nine firms approved to research crypto usage cases under the government’s pilot program in January 2021. Bitso is now planning to launch a cryptocurrency futures exchange site as well as interest-bearing crypto accounts.
Bitso in the United States
Bitso is probably best recognized in the United States for its crypto remittance services conducted in partnership with San Francisco-based Ripple, which also invested in the firm. According to Vogel, Bitso handled about $1.2 billion in remittances last year, accounting for 2.5-3 percent of the yearly remittances total between the United States and Mexico. Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity Service (ODL) fueled the majority of those flows, which provides instant cross-border transfers without pre-funding through Ripple’s cryptocurrency XRP.
