CoinDCX becomes India's first crypto unicorn, raises $90 million in Series C funding round

CoinDCX has become the first crypto exchange in India to join the premium list of Unicorns (valued over $1 billion). In the series C round of funding, the startup raised $90 million from investors led by Facebook's co-founder Eduardo Saverin raising firm's valuation to $1.1 billion. 

Existing investors, including Coinbase Ventures, Block.one, Polychain Capital and Jump Capital, also participated in the Series C round of funding. CoinDCX co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta said that funds raised will be used to expand as well as strengthen the workforce. He also opened up on plans of launching CoinDCX Prime, the company's latest offering that provides legally vetted and safe investments.

With its billion-dollar tag, CoinDCX is placed with Indian startup unicorns like Cred, BharatPe, UpGrad, Droom, ShareChat, Pharmeasy, among others. Internationally, CoinDCX has joined the league of crypto exchanges like Binance, Ripple, Robinhood, Chainalysis and BlockFi.

Founded in 2018, the crypto exchange claims to have more than four million users and plans to add 50 million users in the next few years. In India, it competes with WazirX, CoinDCX, Unoincoin and ZebPay. 

"I can guarantee this decade is going to be the DCX Decade where we will disrupt the FinTech sector with innovative cutting edge technologies. I wish more strength to the CoinDCX team towards onboarding 50 million Indians on the platform," Neeraj Khandelwal, Co-Founder of CoinDCX in the company's blog.

According to its website, CoinDCX describes itself as India's largest and safest crypto exchange "where you can buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with ease."

RBI to come up with digital currency to counter crypto

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last month said that it will launch its own digital currency in the near future to counter cryptocurrencies. For the government, the volatility of unregulated cryptocurrency is a major concern. For instance, Bitcoin reached an all-time high valuation of $65,000 in April, however, in the next month, it fell below $42,000. The Central Bank said that it is likely to come up with a model for its fiat digital currency by year-end.

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