AscendEX is a platform for digital financing using crypto, based in Singapore. They closed the deal at $50 million in a Series B funding round, which was led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC. There was significant participation from other investors like Palm Drive Capital, Nothing Research, Acheron Trading, Eterna Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Alameda Research and Jump Capital.
The company has raised $63 million in total as the overall investment they have received from their funding rounds, including a collection of $13 million from their previous Series A round, held in 2018. This information was confirmed to Blockworks by the global head of business development performed at AscendEX, Shane Molidor.
The platform launched by AscendEX provides staking products that are cross-collateralized, to ensure that their users can yield and generate productivity while simultaneously trading on leverage, along with focusing on maximizing their earning and trading potential. The company has been providing these services since they were founded three years ago. Initially, they were named BitMax, but according to Molidor, the company rebranded to the name AscendEX during the second quarter of 2021.
According to him, this rebranding was a signal toward a paradigm shift for the team. He expressed the wish to evolve, ascend and grow into something bigger than just an exchange. He added being sure that the rebranding will help the entire team, and post rebranding he saw the team to start embracing the platform as something bigger than simply exchange, followed by beginning to emphasize their earning products which bridge the CeFi to the DeFi.
Currently, the business has visualized its average trade volume on a daily basis to be over $200 million. According to a recent release made by the press, they operate as a yield farming portal and a validator, helping more than 60 token projects. The report also mentioned how the company plans to use the incoming funds to enter new markets worldwide as well as for product innovations, as far as they can.
They have been in the Singapore-based market for some time, gaining its reputation as a registered platform in trading. As per Molidor, this has helped the company to build a strong presence in the Asia-Pacific countries using their retail demographic. He added how despite the fact that AscendEX doesn’t provide services in the US due to unavailability, they still have a strong institutional presence throughout Eastern and Western Europe. They want to extend their demographics through places that are crypto-centric, like Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, or in other words, they are choosing places where they shall be identified as something more than a simple speculative instrument. They are willing to be chosen as a cornerstone in daily life, and places like these, which are developing their technological outcomes rapidly, shall be suitable to bring in more profitability for the company. In general, positive transformations are occurring.
