A cryptocurrency exchange serving the Latin American market has raised a big round of funding with a big valuation to match. That exchange is Bitso, which stands out as one of the few licensed and regulated crypto exchanges in the Latin American region.

Details:

• Bitso has raised a $250mn Series C round valuing it at $2.2bn. The round was co-led by buddy investors Tiger Global and Coatue, whom were joined by a mix of new and existing investors including Mary Meeker’s Bond, Valor Capital Group, and Paradigm, a crypto-focused investment firm headed by a co-founder of Coinbase.

• The Series C round follows an earlier $62mn Series B that Bitso closed in December 2020. For a seven-year old startup backed by such huge funding, Bitso is an outlier and obvious leader in the Latin American startup world.

• People across Latin America have joined the rest of the globe in increasing adoption of crypto recently, particularly as local fiat currencies in the region depreciate. Such adoption requires the need for exchanges and more so licensed and regulated ones for end-consumers willing to buy cryptocurrency and Bitso has positioned itself to fill that need.

• Bitso says it’s crossed the 2 million user mark in the three countries it’s present in which are Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. It’s a major milestone for a company that took six years to get its first million users and then got a million more in less than a year after. 

• With its new funds, Bitso says it’ll work to expand into other Latin American countries.

Highlights:

• Like many exchanges of its kind, Bitso offers a simple way for its users to buy, sell, send, or receive cryptocurrency amongst each other. It’s then better for Bitso that it follows a regulatory framework from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC), with rules such as insuring its users’ funds like banks do.

• Bitso’s regulatory framework is a foundation for higher user trust compared to the rest of crypto exchanges serving the Latin American market.

• Like many exchanges of its kind, Bitso primarily makes money from transaction fees charged to its users when they deal cryptocurrency, a business model that’s been proven very lucrative if done right. 

• Bitso itself is headquartered in Mexico but maintains a large remote workforce across 25 countries. Currently, it has over 300 employees.

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