The funding round was led by Valar Ventures and partners from DST Global
Austrian cryptocurrency company Bitpanda has raised US$170 million in a funding round. The company plans to use the money to boost its international growth.
The Series B funding round was led by Valar Ventures, a venture capital firm backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Bitpanda announced on Tuesday. The round also included partners from The News Spy Yuri Milner’s investment firm DST Global, which is known as a major investor in crypto-friendly US stock trading app Robinhood. DST is a new investor in Bitpanda.
Valar previously led a Series A funding round in September 2020 that raised $52 million
Bitpanda says the new funding round has made the company „Austria’s first unicorn“. The company’s valuation has thus risen to 1.2 billion US dollars.
Bitpanda plans to use the money to further expand its services across Europe, with plans to set up tech centres and offices in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris and Berlin. In addition to its headquarters in Austria, Bitpanda already has branches in France, Spain, Turkey, Italy and Poland. „Now it’s about growing internationally, expanding our existing products and services, and bringing our financial solutions to new audiences,“ Bitpanda CEO and co-founder Eric Demuth told Cointelegraph.
Apart from its global expansion efforts, Bitpanda also plans to offer several new products on its platform in the near future. These include trading in partial shares and exchange-traded funds.
Bitpanda was founded in 2014 and originally focused on investing and trading cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), but now also offers other investment options. „We are gradually becoming a pan-investment platform instead of just a crypto broker,“ Demuth said.
The recent Series B funding round was signed last week, according to the announcement, and is still awaiting approval from the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA). Shortly before, Bitpanda had upgraded its local licence and received the status of an FMA-approved investment firm in early March.