Austrian cryptocurrency trading platform Bitpanda is benefiting from a “return” in the cryptocurrency market, raising $263 million in a new funding round.
In its last round of funding in March, the company achieved unicorn status, when it was valued at $1.2 billion. The latest capital raise puts the company at $4.1 billion, more than triple since March.
The Vienna-based company said the capital increase was led by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, with Valar Venture and Alan Howard with REDO Ventures, according to Bloomberg.
The company that offers trading in cryptocurrencies, derivatives and commodities at the time of writing has three million users and is on a steady path of nearly six times the user base this year. According to the company, they expect to see similar revenue growth.
Customers of the Austrian company can buy cryptocurrency for free with a deposit limit of less than one euro.
The latest capital increase comes after the cryptocurrency market has seen a “comeback”, after a few months ago it witnessed a plunge in prices on fear of increased regulation, as well as the environmental impact of the market. The total cryptocurrency market is now over 2,000 billion NOK.
Bitpanda saw the light in 2014, and company founders Christian Trumer, Paul Kalanchik and Eric Demuth are still the majority owners of the company. This gives the entrepreneurs a total fortune of just over NOK 2 billion, according to Bloomberg.
The company is now planning to expand further into Europe and is already present in Barcelona, Berlin, Krakow, London, Madrid, Milan and Paris. Earlier in June, the company moved into the B2B marketplace, where banks and fintechs can now trade between them.
Eric Demunt stated that the company has no plans to include it on the list yet, but if it does, it will happen through their own platform, as Coinbase, RobinHood and Wise did previously.
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