Amber Group Raises $100 Million Series B as DeFi Booms
Hong Kong based liquidity provider says there is more and more interest from non-crypto native firms.
Amber’s founding team; Source: Amber
key takeaways
- Hong Kong’s Amber Group said Monday that it had closed a series B round which will be used to expand trading services
- Fundraise values the company at $1 billion, up 10x from its Series A in 2019
As institutional interest builds in Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Hong Kong-based liquidity provider and trading infrastructure company Amber Group said that it has closed a $100 million Series B round led by China Renaissance and backed by Series A participants Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain.com.
In an interview with Blockworks, Tiantian Kullander, Co-Founder of Amber Group, said that the firm has seen a “warming up” of interest from investors in DeFi projects.
“We have seen a burgeoning interest from non-crypto native firms over the past year,” he said. “Ranging from traditional macro hedge funds to single and multi family offices, these clients are looking to add crypto strategies as a way to diversify their portfolios.”
Amber Group says it offers principal algorithmic trading, electronic market-making, high-frequency trading, OTC trading, borrowing and lending, derivatives, and other structured products with $1.5 billion in trading capital that varies based on bitcoin and ether prices.
The firm is also a member of derivative exchange BitMex’s top-25 leaderboard for total notional value traded. In a statement, the company noted that its cumulative trading volumes have doubled from $250 billion since the beginning of the year to over $500 billion.
“With the Cambrian explosion of DeFi projects covering different areas of the market, the ecosystem provides users with access to a full spectrum of financial services ranging from lending to trading and derivatives etc,” Kullander told Blockworks. “Since many leading protocols also generate cash flows, this makes valuation of projects easier vs. something like BTC which falls under the store-of-value category.”
This announcement comes amidst a concerted effort to build more pipes that connect DeFi to the traditional finance sector.
In May, hedge fund Blockforce Capital announced that it had partnered with DeFi protocol Vesper Finance to build a regulatory-compliant wrapper that would allow Blockforce’s accredited investors access to Vesper’s liquidity pools without the complications of tokens or wallets.
