In Brief:
- Gemini values at $7.1 billion after a $400M fundraise.
- Morgan Creek Digital led the funding round along with other investors.
- The platform plans to explore the metaverse more with the raised funds.
The leading cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini, raised $400 million in an equity funding round resulting in a $7B valuation of the platform.
As stated in the Forbes report, capital management firm Morgan Creek Digital led the funding round.
The other investors included crypto venture capital firm ParaFi Capital, Pantera, VanEck, Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners, WnderCo, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and private equity firm 10T.
The participation also came from family office advisory Newflow Partners, United Talent Agency, Jane Street, K5 Global, and BoostVC, etc.
Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, popularly known as the “Winklevoss twins” are planning to create a decentralized version of the metaverse with the newly raised funds.
Cameron Winklevoss stated “There’s a centralized path, like Facebook or Fortnite, that is one step away from being a metaverse, and that’s totally fine. But there is another path, which is the decentralized metaverse and that’s the metaverse where we believe there’s greater choice, independence and opportunity, and there is technology that protects the rights and dignity of individuals.”
The Winklevoss twins rose to prominence after suing Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their ConnectU idea and using it to create the social networking site Facebook.
Before Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, Gemini had already marked their first venture into the metaverse by purchasing the NFT marketplace Nifty earlier in 2019.
The Winklevoss twins also want to see the Gemini exchange used by metaverse traders.
After the fundraiser, the twins are expected to retain 75% ownership of the company, and their combined net worth will nearly double from $6 billion in April to $10 billion.
The metaverse hype just keeps on rising exponentially. Yesterday OneRare announced it raised $2 million in a funding round, becoming the first-ever project to create a blockchain-based metaverse for food.
