MoonPay has new investors backing it and among its new investors are celebrities Justin Biebier, Snoop Dogg, Ashton Kutcher, the Chainsmokers, Drake, Jason Derulo, Shawn Mendes, Paris Hilton, and other A-list celebrities.
Together, these new investors have raised $87 million in addition to the $555 million funding round that MoonPay announced last year. The round, which was its first-ever funding round, was led by Tiger Global and Coatue and brought the startup’s valuation to $3.4 billion.
MoonPay was founded in 2018 and is based in Miami. It allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrency on its platform using credit cards, bank transfers or other generally acceptable payment options was founded in 2018. It also sells its technology to cryptocurrency businesses such as Bitcoin.com and OpenSea, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens. MoonPay’s CEO Ivan Soto-Wright describes this model on which the startup operates as “crypto-as-a-service”.
Commenting on the investment, the CEO said that “A lot of companies might open a very small portion of their rounds, but we wanted to take on meaningful checks from these folks, because we want them to be part of this story and shape product direction.”
NFTs, in particular, has become increasingly popular and artistes around the world have started to dive in. Many of these artists have investments in various forms, some have even sold their own NFTs while others own some. What other better retirement plan can a person come up with than to invest in something with so much potential to take over the world? “A lot of them have venture capital portfolios, a lot of them have their own independent ventures, and we came to them saying ‘we can help you understand opportunities around Web3, crypto and the metaverse. We virtually had no rejections. Everyone wanted to be a part of it,” he added.
The startup’s biggest goal is to make cryptocurrency and related services accessible to everyone who wishes to participate; in the same way that video conferencing platforms like Zoom made video call possible over the internet, the CEO said last year after the company had its first financing round. “With the blockchain and cryptocurrencies, I think right now we are still in the dial-up days. Eventually, we will get to this place where it’s frictionless to move any amount of value around anywhere in the world, and costs move as close as possible to zero,” he said.
MoonPay says it has been profitable since launching its platform in 2019 and is currently being used by more than 10 million customers in 160 countries.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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