Binance.US, the American arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, recently closed its first external fundraising effort, bringing in more than $200 million at a pre-money valuation of $4.5 billion, according to a CoinDesk report Wednesday (April 6).
The company will use the fresh capital to improve its spot trading initiative, launch a new suite of products and pay for marketing and educational efforts.
The Binance.US funding round included early-stage venture capitalists and crypto-native firms, including RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, Original Capital, VanEck and Circle Ventures, the report said.
“Binance.US intends to go public in the next two to three years at a time that we deem is right for the business,” a company spokesperson told CoinDesk in an email. The company, which has more than 85 tokens and 190 trading pairs for retail and institutional traders, came on the scene in 2019.
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the exchange’s parent company, said in November that Binance.US was raising a “couple hundred million” in a funding round that would “close in about a month or two.”
Having received regulatory approval in two more states this year, Binance.US is now available in 45 states and eight territories.
Last month, PYMNTS wrote about Binance’s quest to buy banks and payments processors in Brazil as a way into the market, after Zhao made the announcement at Ethereum Rio, a local blockchain conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Related: Seeking Regulatory Foothold, Binance Crypto Exchange on Hunt for Brazilian Bank
Earlier in March, Binance signed a memorandum of understanding to potentially acquire a Brazilian securities brokerage firm, Sim;paul Investimentos. Both that and the acquisition of any banks or payments processors would require regulatory approval — in Sim;paul’s case, from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil (CVM) and the Central Bank of Brazil.
Also in March, the company announced that it had received a crypto-asset service provider license from the Central Bank of Bahrain, followed two days later by a Virtual Asset License from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority.
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