jihan wu

Crypto lender Matrixport seeks $100M funding despite lending crisis

Bitmain-backed crypto lender Matrixport is the other half of a new funding round targeting a $100 million raise.

Matrixport, the cryptocurrency firm founded by Bitmain co-founder Wu Jihan, is in the process of raising $100 million in funding despite the ongoing crypto market crisis.

Lead investors have already committed $50 million for Matrixport’s new funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 25. The deal has yet to be finalized as Matrixport is still looking for investors for the other half of the round.

According to the company, the new round is part of Matrixport’s usual funding agenda. “Matrixport routinely engages with key stakeholders as part of its normal course of business, including investors keen to participate and enable our vision as a digital assets financial services provider,” the firm’s public relations head Ross Gan said.

Matrixport’s new funding comes a year after the firm conducted a $100 million Series C funding round conducted in August 2021, becoming a unicorn with a $1 billion valuation.

The fundraising was led by major global venture capital firms, including DST Global, C Ventures and K3 Ventures. Other contributors in the round included major industry investors like Tiger Global, Qiming Venture Partners, CE Innovation Capital and A&T Capital, alongside existing investors like Polychain, Dragonfly Capital, Lightspeed, IDG Capital and others.

According to Bloomberg data, Matrixport handles $5 billion of trades each month and has tens of billions of dollars of assets under management and custody. The firm reportedly employs close to 300 people.

Established in February 2019, Matrixport is one of the largest cryptocurrency lenders in Asia, offering a wide range of crypto services, including trading and custody. The company also offers cryptocurrency and stablecoin loans, as well as zero-cost loans with a 0% interest rate and liquidation protection.

Matrixport is one of the few crypto lending platforms that appear to have not been affected by the ongoing crisis of cryptocurrency lending. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, some of the biggest crypto lending platforms including Celsius and BlockFi have faced major issues this year due to the ongoing bear market and the associated crisis of cryptocurrency lending.

Related: Crypto lender Hodlnaut reportedly faces police investigation in Singapore

Wu’s crypto company also said that it wasn’t too much affected by the ongoing FTX contagion, reporting a few issues due to the crash of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange. On Nov. 11, Matrixport reported that 79 of its users suffered losses in the aftermath of FTX issues, adding that the affected products included the BTC Fixed Income Products and Victoria BTC Fund Products.

“We would need to emphasize that Matrixport’s products are subject to strict segregation from one another so that a single impacted product will not affect the other products as the underlying asset and fund flow are segregated,” the firm stated.

Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer could delay public offering till 2023

An SEC filing stated Safari Group shareholders could vote to give the company the option to extend the Bitdeer deadline up to four times until December 2023.

Bitdeer, a crypto mining firm spun off from China-based mining manufacturer Bitmain, may see its public offering on Nasdaq delayed a year depending on a vote from shareholders of Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp. 

In a Nov. 2 Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Blue Safari said it will be holding a shareholders meeting before the end of 2022 to vote on whether to extend the deadline of its deal with Bitdeer. The mining firm announced in November 2021 that it had entered into a definitive merger agreement with Blue Safari in order to go public through a special purpose acquisition company in the United States.

The SEC filing stated that shareholders could give the company the option to extend the deadline up to four times until December 2023, as well as move the meeting to a later date if there is an insufficient number of votes. If successful, the two firms could merge under the name Bitdeer Technologies Group for a listing on Nasdaq.

“If the Charter Amendment proposal is not approved and we have not consummated a business combination by the Current Termination Date, we will (a) cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up, (b) as promptly as reasonably possible but not more than ten business days thereafter, subject to lawfully available funds therefor, redeem 100% of the public shares,” said the SEC filing. “In the event we wind up, there will be no distribution from the Trust Account with respect to our rights to receive ordinary share upon the consummation of an initial business combination and the rights will expire worthless.”

Founded and under the leadership of former Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, Bitdeer facilitates cloud-mining services through U.S.-based data centers operated in Tennessee, Washington and Texas. As of Oct. 30, the firm reported it was mining roughly 900 Bitcoin (BTC) daily.

Related: Old Bitcoin mining rigs risk ‘shutdown’ after BTC price slips under $24K

Following the crypto market downturn in May, many crypto firms announced the termination of deals. Israel-based cryptocurrency exchange eToro was valued at roughly $10 billion as of March 2021 and was seemingly on track for a SPAC merger but announced in July it had terminated its agreement with Fintech V. The exchange was reportedly considering a private funding round of up to $1 billion.

Cointelegraph reached out to Bitdeer, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.