Mercado Bitcoin has raised $200 million in a Series B funding round. The Brazil-based digital assets exchange received funding from Softbank Latin America Fund, bringing the total valuation of its parent company – 2TM Group, to $2.1 billion, and automatically giving it’s a spot in the top 10 unicorns in the whole of Latin America.
Mercado Bitcoin was founded in 2013 by brothers Gustavo and Mauricio Chamati, and was Brazil’s first crypto exchange. According to Mercado Bitcoin’s CEO and Executive Chairman of parent company 2TM Group – Roberto Dagnoni, the company has been making profit since 2018 and had been bootstrapped from inception until 2021. The company had been reinvesting its cash revenue into growth and portfolio expansion.
The funding from Softbank comes not too long after the company revealed that it had remarkable outcomes for the first half of the year. According to figures the company shared, about 700,000 people joined the exchange platform to use its services between January and May of this year. The company, therefore, has a customer base of 2.8 million and expects to reach a customer base of 3 million in a short time.
Mercado Bitcoin had its Series A funding round a few months ago. Although the company refused to reveal the amount it raised, the round was led by G2D/GP Investments and Parallax Ventures. Other investors that participated in the round include JP Morgan, DealMake, Evora and Genial, HS Investimentos, and Gear Ventures.
Since this year, Mercado Bitcoin has had quite some impressive improvement in trading volumes, patronage, etc. The company’s trade value grew to $5 billion during the first five months of the year. This figure surpasses the total trading volume it had in its first seven years put together. This figure is also more than ten times the volume it had in the same period in the previous year.
Roberto Dagnoni described Mercado Bitcoin as “the crown jewel” of 2TM Group. Speaking about the latest development and the company’s growth in general he said, “this makes us a somewhat unique case in the ecosystem and among our fintech peers in general – few companies have managed to reconcile over 100 percent YoY growth with a positive bottom–line”.
“There is a lot more to come and the Series B will be a relevant factor in supporting continuous innovation”, he added.
