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
Pure Energie Selects Kraken to Manage Wind, Solar and Storage6.5.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Kraken operating system to manage Pure Energie’s growing portfolio on one intelligent platformPure Energie to benefit from seamless co-ordination across customer load, wind, solar and batteries – maximizing asset value while helping to balance the grid20 sites to onboard in H1 2026, with further expansion planned Pure Energie, a Dutch clean energy company, has selected Kraken – the AI-powered operating system transforming global utilities – to manage and optimize its consumer, wind, solar and battery portfolio across the Netherlands. Kraken brings together grid-scale assets and consumer demand on the same platform, co-ordinating them as a single, intelligent portfolio. This enables Pure Energie to optimize demand and generation in real time – maximizing asset value and helping reduce imbalance costs. The partnership will deliver an energy management system which includes retail balancing, day-ahead curtailment, intraday trading, imbalance optimization, and ancillary market access, alon
Thredd and Currensea Expand Strategic Partnership to Power Next Phase of Growth6.5.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Four-year renewal builds on long-standing collaboration supporting the payments technology platform behind co-branded reward-earning debit cards and the UK’s top-rated travel spending card Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, today announced the renewal and extension of its longstanding partnership with Currensea, the market-leading payments technology platform. The new agreement extends the relationship for an additional four years, reinforcing a collaboration that has been in place since 2019. Currensea has built a strong reputation among travellers with its multi-bank travel card that links directly to customers’ existing bank accounts, offering competitive FX rates without the need to preload funds. In recent years, Currensea has expanded its offering through co-brand partnerships with leading global travel and hospitality brands, including Hilton Hotels, Marriott Bonvoy and United Airlines, allowing cardholders to earn competitive rewards on their day-to-day debit spen
AMINA Becomes First Bank to Support Canton Coin Trading and Custody6.5.2026 08:30:00 CEST | Press release
Swiss-regulated AMINA provides clients with regulated access to the network that DTCC, Visa, BitGo, and others are building on AMINA Bank AG ("AMINA"), a Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA)-regulated crypto bank with global reach, today becomes the first bank to support Canton Coin (CC), the native token of Canton Network, offering custody and trading services to its clients. Canton Network is a public, privacy-preserving blockchain built for capital markets. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260505860056/en/ AMINA Becomes First Bank to Support Canton Coin Trading and Custody Canton has gained significant institutional momentum in recent months, attracting TradFi and DeFi organizations, including the DTCC, Visa, and BitGo, that are building next-generation settlement, tokenisation, custody, and collateral workflows on the network. Canton is also developing an on-chain capital markets ecosystem t
Novatus Global Receives a King’s Award for Enterprise6.5.2026 08:00:00 CEST | Press release
Novatus Global Limited (“Novatus” “Novatus Global” or “the Company”), an award-winning provider of regulatory technology solutions and consulting services to global financial institutions, has been honoured with a King’s Award for Enterprise. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260505378016/en/ Novatus is one of only 185 organisations nationally to be recognised with a prestigious King’s Award for Enterprise in 2026. Announced today (Wednesday 6 May), the Award acknowledges the company’s outstanding achievement in Innovation. Novatus Global, founded in 2019, employs over 100 people across London, the U.S., Australia, and India and has rapidly established itself as a trusted partner to many of the world’s leading banks, asset managers, and financial institutions. Its flagship product, Novatus En:ACT, is a market-leading SaaS platform delivering complete, real-time assurance across global transaction reporting regim
Hisense Delivers 38% Sales Uplift in Western Europe Markets With NIQ’s AI-Powered Market Intelligence6.5.2026 05:00:00 CEST | Press release
NIQ insights drive international expansion and measurable growth for Hisense across key global markets NIQ (NYSE: NIQ), a global leader in consumer intelligence, today shared new learnings from its long-standing collaboration with Hisense, a leading global brand in home appliances and smart technologies. Using NIQ’s AI‑powered market intelligence, Hisense has accelerated international expansion, improved local market decision-making, and delivered measurable growth across more than 20 key markets and 12+ categories. The case study demonstrates how AI‑driven insights help global brands move faster, localize better, and compete more effectively in complex markets. The Challenge As Hisense expanded internationally, it faced rising complexity across global markets. Consumer preferences differed sharply across regions such as Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, making a one‑size‑fits‑all approach ineffective. NIQ’s AI‑powered intelligence delivered the local market depth need
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