FTX US, the American affiliate of the cryptocurrency exchange, earned unicorn status several times over today after raising $400 million in its first funding round from investors at a valuation of $8 billion.

The Series A round included participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Softbank’s Vision Fund 2, Multicoin Capital, Paradigm, Steadview Capital and others.

The Chicago-based crypto exchange was launched in 2020 to compete with other major U.S.-based exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance. 2021 brought massive growth, with FTX US recording an average daily volume of $360 million during the third quarter, according to a press release. The company’s users also jumped 52% quarter over quarter, and today the exchange has over 1 million users.

“FTX US scaled rapidly throughout the course of 2021, and our Series A valuation reflects both what we’ve concretely accomplished and what we’ve laid the groundwork for in 2022,” said Brett Harrison, president of FTX US.

Harrison added that the company would use the funds to continue its growth acceleration, expand its U.S. presence and maintain strict compliance with existing regulations surrounding cryptocurrencies and support emerging laws.

“As lawmakers and regulators continue to develop a U.S. regulatory framework for digital assets, we expect crypto to play a much larger role in the broader financial landscape in 2022 and beyond,” said Harrison.

In October, FTX US acquired LedgerX, which the company rebranded as FTX US Derivatives. The integration of LedgerX’s assets into FTX US allowed FTX US to offer crypto derivatives-based opportunities for retail and institutional investors and brought on the necessary regulatory licensing to permit those operations.

During the same month, FTX also launched FTX NFTs, a marketplace where users can mint, buy, sell and trade nonfungible tokens on the Solana blockchain. Ethereum-based NFT minting and trading capabilities were soon added in December.

NFTs are blockchain-based digital assets that represent the ownership of virtual items such as digital art, music, documents, securities and more. The NFT market reached approximately $41 billion in value by the end of 2021, according to the newest metric from blockchain data company Chainalysis.

“The NFT ecosystem has started to infiltrate pop culture, but has been lacking a platform that provides easy access and exposure to the mainstream audience,” continued Harrison. “With the FTX NFT Platform, we have the ability to provide simpler, safer and easier tools to remove the barriers to entry for that audience to enter the NFT space.”

This investment comes at a time even as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies suffered a slump in market values. Amid the reasons behind the slump is crackdowns across various nations and various other factors. Banking investors have dubbed the price changes and volatility part of a coming “crypto winter,” and warned of further regulatory attention to protect investors.

Harrison said that one of the goals of FTX US would be to work cooperatively with U.S. regulatory agencies and “emerge as the leading U.S.-regulated crypto spot and derivatives exchange.”

On that path, FTX US still has some intense competition. Coinbase recently announced the acquisition of FairX, a regulated derivatives exchange, which it calls a “key stepping stone” in its own journey toward providing crypto derivatives to its customers in the U.S.

Image: FTX US