CoinSwitch Kuber Becomes India’s Latest Crypto Unicorn
- The exchange became India’s top crypto unicorn after a $260 million Series C funding round led by Coinbase Ventures and a16z.
- The funds will help the exchange onboard new clients, and launch new products like lending and staking.
Shutterstock
Crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber has become India’s second crypto-focused company to acquire an unicorn status after closing a $260 million Series C funding round, the exchange said in a press release on 6 October.
According to the announcement, the funding round was led by Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and also saw participation from returning investors such as Sequoia, Paradigm, Ribbit, and Tiger Global. Thanks to the Series C CoinSwitch Kuber is now valued at around $1.91 billion, making the firm the “very top” Indian unicorn. The CEO and co-founder of CoinSwitch Kuber, Ashish Singhal, said on Twitter:
The newly acquired funds will bring CoinSwitch Kuber one step closer to its goal of onboarding 50 million Indians as its customers. The exchange also plans to release new services, such as lending and staking, as well as an innovation fund and a crypto education hub. In order to support more diverse investment options, the company also expects to launch a new product for institutional clients.
Launched in 2020, CoinSwitch Kuber has already grown its user base by more than 10 million users, and is one of the largest crypto exchanges in India. The previous top crypto unicorn in the country was CoinDCX, which in April reached a valuation of $1 billion after it held a $90 million funding round.
- A little over $13 million in altcoins were sent to crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase in the past 24 hours, which is in accordance with a September court order.
- The court ordered a phased liquidation process, which allows the bankruptcy estate to sell $3.4 billion worth of digital assets over a certain period of time.
Shutterstock
- Coinbase’s Base blockchain was made available to the public on Wednesday, featuring over 100 dApps and services as part of its ecosystem.
- In order to show its capabilities and promote its mainnet partners, Base has also launched an event called “Onchain Summer” that will allow users to mint exclusive NFTs on the network.
- During an interview with FT, CEO Brian Armstrong said that before the lawsuit a SEC staff member had said that all crypto except BTC was security, and should be delisted.
- When asked how he came to that conclusion, the SEC staff member reportedly said “we’re not going to explain it to you, you need to delist every asset other that Bitcoin”.