Hong Kong’s liquidity startup Xanpool raises $27M
Cryptocurrency-to-fiat provider Xanpool has announced continuing its expansion operations in the Asia Pacific (APAC) through a fresh funding secured recently.
The Hong Kong-based startup, Xanpool, has reportedly raised $27 million in a Series A funding round initiated by venture capital firm Valar Ventures. Valar Ventures was co-founded by PayPal co-creator Peter Thiel.
Various other participating investors at the funding round included CMT Digital, TransferWise, and others.
Xanpool, already running operations in more than 13 countries within the APAC region, is currently looking to consolidate its presence further through the new funding. CEO Jeffery Liu informed the press that the firm is already operating in countries like Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, India, Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.
Liu continued that in the coming quarter, Xanpool would primarily expand its service into more APAC countries in addition to the existing markets.
Since it was launched in March 2019, Xanpool has amassed over 500,000 users and about 400 business partners, as per the announcement.
Liu said that the firm, by the end of 2022, aims to grow its customer base by 20x to 10 million users spread across the APAC.
XanPool works as a peer-to-peer platform for providing infrastructure for crypto-to-fiat and as a liquidity network that relies on the liquidity of its participants.
The platform operates by deploying unused money by individuals and business organizations for settling cross-currency and cryptocurrency transactions, hence reducing the counterparty risk and costs while simultaneously allowing liquidity providers (LPs) to earn up to 2 per cent on their idle capital.
Liu also informed that Xanpool is currently running a software very similar to DeFi finance platform Uniswap except that instead of crypto-to-crypto, Xanpool’s automated market maker fuels automation between crypto and fiat.
Liu added that instead of crypto native LPs, Xanpool’s LPs range from traditional import-export businesses to several money service operators, and crypto funds. This liquidity, he said, is essentially used for settling local currency and cryptocurrency transactions instantly from the individual’s or organization’s wallet.
He stressed that Xanpool never touches any money on the individuals’ or businesses’ wallets while making the transactions; rather, it “simply makes software which allows the individual or business” automation of buying and selling whereas “in return, earn a fee.”
The most recent funding brings Xanpool’s total raise to an approximate $32 million, including previous rounds of funding by individual investors.
The company has managed to raise $4.3 million in a pre-A financing round in November 2020 in conjunction with its official launch.
