Dragonfly Capital Announces $10 Million Investment In Bitget

Dragonfly Capital has announced a $10 million strategic investment in the derivatives exchange Bitget. 

Bitget has been looking to grow both its earn and spot products and currently facilitates cryptocurrency derivatives trading with an open interest of $2.4 billion. 

The news of the investment could not have come at a better time for Bitget, which had recently acquired a controlling stake in wallet provider Bitkeep. The firm invested $30 million in BitKeep, adding millions of users to its platform. BitKeep is Asia’s largest crypto wallet, boasting around 9.5 million registered users. Bitget is a Seychelles-based exchange that was founded in 2018 and has around 8 million users. The derivatives exchange primarily focuses on customers that are based in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. The exchange is best known for futures trading and was ranked among the top three derivatives exchange in a report by Boston Consulting Group. 

Since its inception, Bitget has grown to over 80,000 traders and 380,000 copy traders. Copy traders are those traders who sync their trading positions with traders through the use of automation. In 2023, the firm plans to expand its launchpad, spot trading, and Bitget Earn products. 

Bitget will be looking to expand its product portfolio and intends to use the strategic investment by Dragonfly Capital towards the expansion of its spot trading and yield-generating products. It will also look to use the funds to help fuel the growth of its launchpad initiative. Bitget’s launchpad is designed to help early-stage token projects get up and running. Additionally, the investment from Dragonfly Capital will also be used towards global initiatives aimed at getting more people into the crypto ecosystem. 

In line with this initiative, Bitget has already struck deals with soccer superstar Lionel Messi and one of the leading clubs in Italy, Juventus. There are also plans afoot to conduct educational campaigns to help boost adoption. Speaking about the Dragonfly Capital investment, Managing Director of Bitget, Gracy Chen, stated, 

“Except for the cash inflow, what will benefit us more from the Dragonfly partnership is their crypto savvy and insights. Together, we will be able to discover more growth opportunities and contribute more to the sustainable growth of our industry.”

The Bitget strategic investment is not the only one made by Dragonfly in the crypto space. The firm has also invested in several other prominent blockchain firms, such as 1inch, Polygon, and Matter Labs. Dragonfly had around $3 billion in assets under management in 2022 and is one of the most active venture investors in the crypto space. The platform had raised $650 million for its third fund as recently as April 2022. 

The FTX collapse had a substantial negative impact on cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges. At the time of its collapse, FTX had facilitated $6.6 billion in contracts in a single day in trading volume, with an open interest of $5.1 billion. However, the markets have shown signs of life and have recovered to around $68.5 billion at the time of writing. This is in stark contrast to the $60.1 billion in December 2022, when the markets were at their lowest, according to data from CoinMarketCap. 

While the markets may have found some sense of stability following the FTX collapse, there are still a lot of issues facing the crypto ecosystem. One such problem is the increased regulatory scrutiny of major players. One example of this is the lawsuit filed against Binance by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC, in its lawsuit, alleges that Binance onboarded nearly 2.8 million customers without registering with the correct regulatory authority. 

Binance faces scrutiny because, under US laws, the onus of due diligence before onboarding users falls on the seller. This is why it is unlikely that the alleged users could face any consequences for registering on the platform, but Binance would. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.