Mad Lads’ Backpack Exchange closes $17 million Series A led by Placeholder VC

Zoltan Vardai11 hours agoMad Lads’ Backpack Exchange closes $17 million Series A led by Placeholder VCThe funds will be used to continue the exchange’s global expansion and further improve products, its founder told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview.2983 Total views1 Total sharesListen to article 0:00NewsOwn this piece of crypto historyCollect this article as NFTJoin us on social networksSolana-based cryptocurrency exchange Backpack has closed a $17 million strategic Series A funding round, giving it a $120 million combined valuation.

The funding round was led by Placeholder VC, with participation from other strategic investors, including Hashed, Robot Ventures, Amber Group, Wintermute, Jump Crypto, Selini Capital, Delphi Digital, as well as some notable founders from Web3 ecosystems like Solana and Tensor, according to a Feb. 28 press release shared with Cointelegraph.

According to Armani Ferrante, the founder and CEO of Backpack Exchange, the new funding round marks a new chapter for the crypto industry. Ferrante wrote:“The history of finance is littered with scandals, but Backpack is doing things differently. Over the past year, we’ve set the foundation to build a crypto-native financial institution, and with the conclusion of this round, with trust minimization and compliance as foundational principles, we begin a new chapter for ourselves and, hopefully, for the rest of the industry.”

Cryptocurrency exchanges are highly capital-intensive, according to Ferrante. The new funds will be deployed to continue the exchange’s compliant expansion around the world, Ferrante told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview on Feb. 27:

“There’s a number of things that we’re looking to use the funds for, including global expansion and product [development], but I don’t want to say too much.”

Backpack is currently the 91st largest exchange in the world by daily volume, with a 24-hour trading volume of $312 million as of Feb. 28. In contrast, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, recorded over $26.3 billion in 24-hour trading volume, while Bybit amassed $4.5 billion as the second-largest exchange, according to CoinGecko data.

Backpack surpassed $1 billion in 24-hour volume on Feb. 18, within four days of the launch of its trading pre-season. Ferrante told Cointelegraph that the exchange’s success was a testament to a maturing crypto industry demanding more trustworthy exchanges.

The Backpack ecosystem comprises multiple products, including the exchange, the Backpack noncustodial wallet and the Mad Lads nonfungible token collection, which is currently the fifth largest Solana-native NFT collection with an all-time sales volume of over $119 million, according to CryptoSlam data.

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