Mexican Exchange Bitso Raises $250M in Series C

Bitso, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Latin America, has raised $150 million in a Series C round, valuing the company at $2.2 billion. According to the exchange, it’s the first digital asset company in the region to exceed a $1 billion valuation. 

Investment firms Tiger Global and Coatue led the funding round, which comes shortly after Bitso’s December 2020 $62 million Series B. Other investors include Paradigm, Valor Capital Group, QED, Pantera Capital and Kaszek. 

Mexico-based Bitso, founded in 2014, offers cryptocurrency products and services to clients across Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Services include a retail exchange with eight different cryptocurrencies available to trade and an institutional-grade exchange. 

Bitso has had a successful year so far. The company announced that it more than doubled the assets on its platform over the last five months. Additionally, its transacting volume during the 2021 first quarter exceeded that for all of 2020. 

In January 2021, Bitso became one of nine firms approved by Colombian officials to be included in its fintech regulatory testing environment. 

Bitso claims it currently dominates the Latin American crypto market with a 95% market share in Mexico and a more than 60% market share in Argentina. 

California-based Ripple led an investment round in Bitso in 2019. 

“The Bitso team is unparalleled—their technology was built from the ground up through years of experience with scalable and reliable distributed systems,” Ripple said in its investment announcement. “The company and team are well positioned to execute a global expansion to LatAm and we are excited to partner with them in this next phase of growth.”