Indonesian crypto exchange and investment platform Pintu recently announced that it had raised $113 million in its Series B funding from Lightspeed, Pantera Capital, Northstar Group, and Intudo Ventures.
Pintu said that it would use the raised funds to expand its educational arm—Pintu Academy—and develop its product offerings by introducing new features and support for blockchains, among other things.
Launched in April 2020, Pintu is one of Indonesia’s leading homegrown crypto assets platforms. Notably, this is the third round of funding that the startup has bagged over the past 13-odd months.
The first $6 million Series A funding round happened in May last year, while the second one that happened two months later—the Series A+—involved $35 million. Also, per the exchange, over four million people have installed its native app, up from last May’s 500,000.
The Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency [Bappebti] had recently brought to light that the number of Indonesian crypto investors in Indonesia had doubled in 2021-2022. Reacting to the same, Jeth Soetoyo, Founder and CEO of Pintu, said,
“We believe that crypto adoption in Indonesia is only in its beginning stages, and educating users on the fundamentals is critical to ensuring this growth continues in a healthy way.”
How are other existing exchanges faring?
Most other exchanges are having a tough time at the moment. Gemini is currently drowning in legal waters as two back-to-back suits—one against the CTFC and the other against the IRA Financial Trust have been filed in a span of less than a week.
Even on the operations side, Gemini is in a fix. A couple of days back, it had announced that it was parting ways with 10% of its workforce, and alongside, its trade volume numbers have also been more towards the downside. In fact, even Coinbase is in a similar situation at the moment.
While Binance’s volume numbers have taken a hit, its state of affairs within its ecosystem hasn’t been impacted that much. The largest crypto exchange recently issued a statement saying that they’re going to have “a very active pipeline” in the months ahead. In fact, it is currently hiring for more than 500 positions globally.
On the macro frame, the crypto market has remained in bearish waters for weeks now. Crypto winter usually rubs off negatively on exchanges, because it indirectly shrinks their revenue. Amid such conditions, Pintu raising funds, and Binance coping well are the positive takeaways. Nevertheless, as the state of the market improves, other exchanges would eventually get back on track.