According
to a person familiar with the transaction, Dan Tapiero's 10T Holdings and Akuna
Capital have invested $100 million in bitcoin futures exchange Deribit.
Deribit,
one of the largest crypto options exchanges in the world in terms of volume,
verified the transaction but refused to disclose its current value. It said
that 10T and Akuna acquired stock via secondary market transactions, implying
that no new shares were issued.
When
the latest Deribit share transfer made headlines, the Panamanian firm was
estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That was in January
2020; trading in options contracts on Deribit has more than quadrupled since
then.
Tapiero's
crypto equity fund, which started in February with $200 million to invest in
late-stage businesses in the sector, made a big gamble with the acquisition.
Akuna is also an investor in cryptocurrency companies, having invested in
several rounds of financing for crypto lender BlockFi.
“We are delighted to make a substantial investment in Deribit since no company in the digital asset ecosystem is as dominating in its area as Deribit is,” Tapiero, a well-known macro investor, stated in a press release.
According
to Coinbase-owned analytics platform Skew, Deribit handles the overwhelming
majority of worldwide bitcoin options transactions. On Thursday, it disclosed
an open interest of $8 billion in bitcoin.
Deribit
said in a press release that it has expanded in lockstep with institutional
interest in cryptocurrency this year. According to Akuna CEO John Harris, there
is a “tremendous opportunity” to further extend that presence.
Deribit CEO John Jansen said, "We still have a lot of development ahead of us."
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