MoonPay, a crypto payments startup, recently announced that it raised $555 million from tech investment manager Coatue, and American investment firm Tiger Global. The funding exercise now puts MoonPay at a laudable valuation of $3.4 billion.
Prior to this development, MoonPay had been subsisting reasonably well, raking in steady profit since it began operations in 2019. Furthermore, so far this year, it has accrued about $150 million in net revenue. MoonPay has been gradually growing its profile, even receiving a vote of confidence from popular American talk show host Jimmy Fallon. During an interview with Michael Joseph Winkelmann, an American digital artist known professionally as Beeple, Fallon said he bought his first NFT through MoonPay. The talk show personality even described MoonPay as “PayPal for crypto.”
Ivan Soto-Wright, co-founder and chief executive officer of MoonPay also gave his account of meeting Fallon – and the subsequent ‘shout out’ from the latter. According to Soto-Wright:
“I was lucky enough to sit down for coffee with Jimmy. A friend of mine introduced me to him last week during NFT.NYC and, organically, he was like, let me shout it out on the show.”
When asked if he concurred with Fallon’s assessment likening MoonPay to PayPal, Soto-Wright said he envisioned his company becoming the “passport” to Web3. This is a direct comparison to how PayPal was instrumental to the growth and adaptation of e-commerce.
Image Credits: Pixabay
