SoftBank-Backed Brazilian Bitcoin Exchange Raises $50 Million in Extension Round
- 2TM, the owner of Brazil’s biggest bitcoin exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, has raised $50 million in an extension round.
- Now valued at $2.15 billion, the group had captured $200 million in July from SoftBank Group Corp.
- Mercado Bitcoin has over 3 million clients, while the country’s stock exchange has 3.8 million individual investor accounts as of the first semester of this year.
2TM, the owner of Mercado Bitcoin, the biggest Latin American bitcoin exchange, has raised an extra $50 million in an extension round that initially captured $200 million from SoftBank Group Corp, reported Bloomberg.
The company received investments from private equity firm 10T Holdings and Tribe Capital, a venture capital fund based out of San Francisco with investments in FTX and Kraken. Brazilian venture capital firm PIPO Capital Gestao de Investimentos Ltda. is also participating in the round, per the report.
“After a torturous path trying to explain a technology as disruptive as blockchain, we are now able to convince Brazilian investors about its possibilities and also venture capitalists about the potential of Latin American markets,” 2TM co-founder Gustavo Chamati told Bloomberg.
Chamati said the investment’s proceeds would be geared toward growth and the development of new products. His company aims to expand into Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina.
“We are very happy to bring to our firm specialized investors such as Tribe Capital and 10T Holdings,” 2TM CEO Roberto Dagnoni told Bloomberg, adding that they plan on getting another round of private investment before considering going public.
2TM’s Mercado Bitcoin has reached over 3 million clients and traded more than $7.1 billion, more than all its previous years combined. The exchange was the first to be created in Brazil in 2013 and has since grown into a unicorn startup. For context, there were 3.8 million individual investor accounts on the country’s stock exchange in the first semester of 2021.
