ASCENDEX
3.11.2021 20:58:03 CET | Business Wire | Press release
AscendEX , a global cryptocurrency financial platform, has announced the close of a $50 million Series B raise led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC , with participation from Jump Capital and Alameda Research , as well as Uncorrelated Ventures , Eterna Capital , Acheron Trading , Nothing Research , and Palm Drive Capital . Imperii Partners served as an exclusive financial advisor to AscendEX in support of the Series B fundraise process.
AscendEX, launched under the name “BitMax” in July 2018, offers exchange, custody, and staking services to over one million retail and institutional clients globally. The platform has positioned itself as an infrastructure partner to blockchain companies, specifically in the decentralized finance (“DeFi”) sector, and operates as a validator and yield farming portal for over 60 token projects.
“We are grateful to have very prominent investors involved in our latest fundraising round, ” said George Cao, CEO and Co-founder of AscendEX. “Polychain Capital and Hack VC, as active catalysts of the DeFi ecosystem, have backed some of the industry’s most innovative blockchain networks, exchanges, and trading institutions. Similarly, Alameda Research, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, has emerged as one of the most prolific investors in the industry, fueling growth within both CeFi and DeFi. Participation from Jump Capital, a seasoned Crypto and Fintech investor, further showcases the success of our deep roots in traditional finance, as AscendEX’s core team is proud of our extensive experience in Wall Street quant trading.”
AscendEX is well positioned at the nexus between centralized & decentralized financial sectors, as evidenced by its AscendEX Earn products, and cross-collateralized staking products that allow users to generate yield while trading on leverage. By empowering retail and institutional users to maximize their trading and earning potential, AscendEX has achieved over $200 million in average daily trade volume and provides competitive yields among competing centralized exchanges.
“AscendEX plans to use the Series B funds to accelerate international market entry, and catalyze further product innovation, specifically focused on blockchain-based yield generating protocols,” notes Shane Molidor, Global Head of Business Development at AscendEX. “Building a bridge to the DeFi ecosystem has allowed AscendEX to differentiate itself from other cryptocurrency exchanges and has made the platform a popular destination for innovative DeFi projects to conduct initial exchange offerings (“IEOs”). We are thrilled to collaborate with our new investors to further solidify our unique competitive advantages.”
Sam Trabucco, Co-CEO of Alameda Research, added, “Alameda has had nothing but great experiences working with AscendEX as a customer and market maker, and we’re thrilled to keep expanding our relationship in new ways with this investment.”
“AscendEX is a leader in transitioning crypto projects from primary to secondary markets, as seen through the continued success of the tokens listed on the exchange, ” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, Founder & CEO at Polychain Capital. “We look forward to deepening our collaboration with AscendEX by providing insights into evolving industry trends and providing guidance on top-tier projects to list on the exchange.”
AscendEX uniquely provides dedicated auxiliary support for blockchain projects seeking to list on the platform, including consultation on the token economic design, secondary market liquidity strategies, staking support, liquidity mining, as well as global marketing support and translation services. These supporting services further differentiate AscendEX’s IEO process from other mainstream exchanges, and in turn, allow listings to achieve industry leading results.
"In an extremely competitive crypto exchange landscape, AscendEX has impressively emerged as the leading venue for innovative crypto projects in DeFi, GameFi and crypto infrastructure , " said Saurabh Sharma, Partner at Jump Capital. "AscendEX remains ahead of the curve by constantly innovating and offering unmet needs such as broad staking access and DeFi yield farming for retail investors."
Alex Pack at Hack VC added, “The concept of extracting more value from the crypto held in your wallet has become immensely popular with decentralized lending and yield farming protocol – AscendEX has further expanded on this by cross-collateralizing their wallets with validator nodes, allowing users to trade while earning. No other exchange is offering this degree of flexibility for users to earn and participate in blockchain governance while also trading on leverage.”
To learn more about AscendEX, please visit AscendEX.com .
About AscendEX
AscendEX is a global cryptocurrency financial platform servicing more than one million institutional and retail traders with the resources needed to obtain more value from their crypto investments. Operating at the nexus of centralized finance and decentralized finance, AscendEX’s platform features access to futures and spot trading, a robust wallet infrastructure, and staking support for over 200 industry-leading blockchain projects, all producing industry leading yields and returns, further driving the growth of the crypto ecosystem. In efforts to cultivate scalable and secure forms of decentralized financing, AscendEX has emerged as a leading platform by ROI on its “initial exchange offerings” through supporting some of the industry’s most innovative projects from the DeFi ecosystem. To learn more about how AscendEX leverages best practices from both Wall Street and the cryptocurrency ecosystem to extract the highest value per dollar to its users, please visit www.AscendEX.com
.
About Polychain Capital
The emergence of bitcoin and subsequent blockchain technologies has generated a new digital asset class in which scarcity is based on mathematical properties. Through cryptographic verification and game-theoretic equilibrium, blockchain-based digital assets can be created, issued, and transmitted using software. Polychain is an investment firm committed to exceptional returns for investors through actively managed portfolios of these blockchain assets.
About Hack VC
Hack VC is a private equity firm based in Incline Village, Nevada.
About Alameda Research
Alameda Research was founded in October 2017. We manage over $1 billion in digital assets and trade $1-10 billion per day across thousands of products: all major coins and altcoins, as well as their derivatives. We have a full-scale global operation with the ability to trade on all major exchanges and markets.
About Jump Capital
Jump Capital is a leading venture fund investing in Crypto and Fintech globally.
About Uncorrelated Ventures
Uncorrelated Ventures was founded by Salil Deshpande with Bain's backing to focus on open source and infrastructure software, both traditional and decentralized. Over 14 years as general partner and managing director at Bay Partners and Bain Capital, Salil invested $350M+ into 50+ companies early. Additionally, Salil was on the Forbes Midas List of the 100 best-performing venture investors worldwide in 2013 – 2019, and Business Insider's inaugural Seed-100 list of the 100 best-performing seed investors in 2021.
About Eterna Capital
Eterna Capital is a UK-based venture capital fund focused on backing bold, innovative teams that harness the power of blockchain. Launched in March of 2018, Eterna has invested in numerous high profile deals and is committed to helping entrepreneurs reach their ambitious goals by providing unique insights and support.
About Acheron Trading
Acheron Trading is a designated market maker building liquid markets for digital assets. We trade on centralized and decentralized exchanges worldwide with over $250 million in assets under management.
About Nothing Research
Nothing Research is a multi-strategy venture firm investing in open finance initiatives. It was founded in March 2021 by a group of digital asset market veterans with professional backgrounds from research institutes, hedge funds and leading digital asset trading platforms such as Huobi and AscendEX. It differentiates itself with its desirability to build alongside founders and shapes narratives together with invested projects.
About Palm Drive Capital
Palm Drive Capital is a New York, and Miami-based venture capital and growth equity fund that has invested in over 100 leading software and internet companies around the world.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211103006190/en/
Link:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Horizon3 Earns Cyber Essentials Certification Covering NodeZero EU Network28.9.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
Certification provides a defined security baseline for the network supporting Horizon3’s EU data sovereignty site in Germany Horizon3, the AI-Native Proactive Security Company, today announced that it has earned Cyber Essentials Plus certification covering its NodeZero AWS EU network. The network supports Horizon3’s EU data sovereignty site in Germany. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260928143792/en/ Horizon3 Earns Cyber Essentials Certification Covering NodeZero EU Network Organizations use NodeZero® to test production environments and find weaknesses attackers can exploit. When customers and partners assess the platform itself, they also need to understand the security standards applied to its supporting infrastructure. The Cyber Essentials certificate identifies a defined portion of that infrastructure and the baseline against which it was assessed. Developed by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Cybe
Thales Expands Collaboration with Google Cloud to Help Secure Agentic AI Workflows28.9.2026 09:03:00 CEST | Press release
Integration enables new protections for communications between AI agents, models, enterprise data, and tools to help control what agents can access, share, and do Thales AI Security Fabric mitigates risks, brings enhanced visibility and policy enforcement to AI-driven workflows on Google Cloud Thales today announced an expanded collaboration with Google Cloud to help enterprises address emerging security and governance challenges associated with agentic AI, bringing integrated protection, visibility, and policy enforcement to AI-driven workflows on Google Cloud. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260928647188/en/ ©Thales The integration of Thales AI Security Fabric with Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise helps organizations apply security, governance, and visibility across interactions among users, agents, models, and tools in real time. “Enterprises are moving from AI assistants to AI agents that can autonomously ta
SPORVIGILANCE Targets Safer Medicines and Billion-Euro Savings for Global Pharma Facing EU IDMP Fines28.9.2026 08:13:00 CEST | Press release
British regulatory technology company SPORVIGILANCE is targeting one of global pharma’s major compliance challenges with a platform offering a faster route to IDMP and SPOR readiness, compliance and governance. As the European Medicines Agency advances structured medicinal product data, companies face pressure to keep regulatory data accurate, standardised and aligned with EMA requirements. SPORVIGILANCE replaces fragmented manual assessment with a regulatory intelligence layer built around IDMP, SPOR and Product Management Service (PMS) requirements. At its core is an IDMP Business Rule Validation Engine that assesses medicinal product data at scale and at field level, identifying missing, inconsistent and non-compliant data. SPORVIGILANCE is the only platform to translate IDMP business rules directly into automated validation logic, enabling companies to test data against the rules rather than rely on manual interpretation. Its PMS Alignment capability reconciles internal RIM data ag
Sofinnova Partners Closes Oversubscribed €82 Million Sofinnova MD Start IV Fund to Create the Next Generation of Medtech Companies28.9.2026 08:00:00 CEST | Press release
The new fund extends Sofinnova’s 20-year track record of company creation with capacity to launch six to eight new ventures across Europe and the US Sofinnova Partners ("Sofinnova"), a leading European life sciences venture capital firm based in Paris, London, and Milan, today announced the final close of Sofinnova MD Start IV at €82 million. The fund, which was oversubscribed, will help expand Sofinnova's medtech company-creation strategy across Europe and the US with greater capacity to launch new ventures and support them through key stages of development. With plans to launch six to eight new medtech companies over the next five years, Sofinnova MD Start IV will support ventures from inception through key clinical and operational milestones, providing founders with both capital and hands-on support. Sofinnova MD Start's approach combines clinical insight, entrepreneurial talent, and operational expertise to tackle significant unmet medical needs. The previous fund, Sofinnova MD Sta
Ant International’s Antom Upgrades Southeast Asia Leadership Structure to Drive Regional Synergy in the AI Era28.9.2026 07:18:00 CEST | Press release
Antom, a leading merchant payment and digitisation services provider under Ant International, today announced a series of key appointments for its operations in Southeast Asia to further strengthen the synergy among its regional brands and better serve regional merchants with streamlined full-stack AI-native solutions. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260927431282/en/ Nabilah Alsagoff, co-founder and former chief operating officer of DOKU, Indonesia's leading payment fintech company, has been appointed as Head of Product, Antom SEA. In her new role, the payment veteran will oversee product development and innovation and drive a unified product roadmap for the overall SEA region. Chris Yeo, former chief executive officer (CEO) of DOKU, will take on the role as Head of Antom Philippines, and Country Head of 2C2P Philippines. With his long experience at DOKU, Grab and PayPal, Chris will also oversee the execution
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom