Vienna-based investment and trading platform Bitpanda has raised a USD52 million Series A funding round, Europe’s largest series A funding round of 2020, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.
Vienna-based investment and trading platform Bitpanda has raised a USD52 million Series A funding round, Europe’s largest series A funding round of 2020, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.
Founded in 2014, Bitpanda is a retail broker for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin.
Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald, managing partners of Valar Ventures, will take seats on the platform’s board following the deal.
“With Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald from Valar Ventures, we have found like-minded people who share our vision. Teamwork is crucial and as part of the investment, we are happy that they will join Bitpanda’s board and help us bring Bitpanda to the next stage,” Eric Demuth, the company’s CEO and co-founder, commented on the appointments.
Valar Ventures has previously led investment rounds into European fintechs including Transferwise and Germany-based digital bank N26.
“With their extensive track record in growing digital champions like PayPal in its early years and supporting Peter Thiel during its IPO and eventual sale to eBay in 2002, we are more than confident in the choice,” Demuth added.
Bitpanda will use the fresh capital to focus on its geographical expansion and to introduce new products to the market, according to Demuth.
Currently the Austrian exchange is operating in around 34 countries – it has established itself in countries like France, Spain, and Turkey since the beginning of 2020, and aims to expand into more European countries during the rest of the year.
Other fintech investors including Speedinvest also participated in the round. The partnership with Speedinvest started one year ago and was finalised earlier in 2020.
“One of the major projects was this Series A round, which was made possible by the incredible support of Speedinvest. The unusual past months during Covid-19 have been a hell of a ride. Doing fundraising during those times was challenging as everything had to be done via Zoom calls,” said Demuth.
