Unicorn Status for CoinList After $100M Raise at $1.5B Valuation
CoinList is a platform that connects protocols in crypto, like Solana, Filecoin and Algorand, with early crypto adopters, Graham Jenkin, co-founder and CEO of CoinList told Blockworks.
Graham Jenkin; Source: CoinList
key takeaways
- A big part of what’s driving demand is the “mainstreaming” of bitcoin, Jenkin said
- The mainstream focus has been on currency and finance, but behind the scenes there’s a software development revolution going on
CoinList raised $100 million in Series A round, increasing its valuation to $1.5 billion, to keep growing and scaling its operations, Graham Jenkin, co-founder and CEO of CoinList told Blockworks.
The round was co-led by Agman Partners and Accomplice. Other participants include Alphemy Capital, Continue Capital, CMT Digital, DFG Capital Management, Fenbushi Capital, executives from GoldenTree Asset Management, Rising Tide Fund, Imperii Partners, and Metaplanet.
The company has raised $120 million to date, with its last round valued at $90 million in 2019 led by Polychain, Jenkin said. The company got its start in the crypto space by running US-accredited investor distributions, which adhere to regulatory constraints, he explained. CoinList applies local licensing when required, he added.
CoinList is a platform that connects protocols in crypto, like Solana, Filecoin and Algorand, with early crypto adopters. “In the last year, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the quality and quantity of new protocols, applications, and networks and this has been the major driver of our growth,” Jenkin noted.
The rapid growth in crypto is the primary reason for their latest fundraising round so that the company can scale its engineering systems and operations and support its audience, he said. The capital will also be used to roll out more features on its platform like CoinList Governance and CoinList Karma, Jenkin said.
The company’s monthly trading volume increased to $1 billion in 2021, up from the low hundreds of millions by the end of 2020, after it launched trading formally in July 2020, according to Jenkin.
Additionally, the company’s KYC-approved global user base has increased 42 times in the past 12 months, but a big part of what’s driving demand, Jenkin thinks, is the “mainstreaming” of bitcoin. The total assets staked on CoinList is $2.6 billion, and staking users have received over $130 million in staking awards, the company said.
“There has been a ton of innovation — first via DeFi and now via NFTs and gaming — which has made the potential of this technology more evident to more people,” Jenkin said.”
As decentralized software takes on more traditional software verticals — search, social, ecommerce, SaaS — we’ll see an influx of thousands more tokens and protocols,” he added.
Jenkin believes that, while the mainstream focus on crypto has been on currency and finance, behind the scenes there’s a software development revolution going on. “We have a long way to go, but that’s what the future holds,” he added.
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