140 Billion Rupiah Funding Obtained by Easy Crypto from GDP Venture and a Number of Investors

New Zealand based crypto marketplace platform, EasyCrypto announced that it has secured a series A round of $12 million or equivalent to 170 billion Rupiah, led by Nuance Connected Capital and involving venture firm GDP Venture belonging to the Djarum Group.

In addition, a number of other foreign investors also participated in this funding including pension fund managers Pathfinder KiwiSaver, Icehouse Ventures, Even Capital, Hutt Capital, and Seven Peaks Ventures.

In her official statement, Easy Crypto Co-founder & CEO Janine Grainger said she was targeting the Indonesian and Southeast Asian markets as her next business expansion target. This is in line with the involvement of institutional investors who believe role of crypto assets in the financial ecosystem.

"This capitalization is an important milestone for Easy Crypto and the future blockchain in this world. The increased investment interest in crypto is supporting the growth of Easy Crypto on a global scale," said Grainger.

According to his claims, the investment is the largest first round of funding ever obtained by a company in New Zealand. Prior to this, Easy Crypto had never accepted investment from angel investors as well as other investors in stages seed.

Easy Crypto allows users to make buy-sell transactions and trade more than 150 crypto assets. The platform was founded by brothers Janine and Alan Grainger in 2018. To date, Easy Crypto has posted over $750 million in sales with a fivefold increase in the number of users over the past year.

For now, Easy Crypto only operates in South Africa, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand and Brazil. With the support of venture capitalist GDP Venture, Easy Crypto can push its expansion plans to Indonesia as a top priority.

GDP Venture CTO On Lee said, currently millions of Indonesians already own crypto. The growth trend of crypto in Indonesia will allow Easy Crypto to penetrate with the ease of buying and selling.

Little information, GDP Venture also has a GDP Labs subsidiary that focuses on developing technology products, such as blockchain, cloud computing, mobile computing, big data, to machine learning. This investment enables Easy Crypto synergies with products developed by GDP Labs.

"GDP Venture through GDP Labs has built a business unit consultingblockchain to assist implementation blockchain from our partners," he said, contacted separately by DailySocial.id.

Meanwhile, Nuance Connected Capital Founding Partner Adrien Gheur added, adoption of crypto assets and blockchain increasing, both in the form of trade, payment, and exchange. "The number of global crypto users is expected to grow by 80% annually in the next three years."

Crypto potential in Indonesia

Launch Dataword, the phenomenon of the growth of crypto asset transactions in Indonesia continues even though it only contributes 1% to the total global transaction volume. Based on data from the Ministry of Commerce, the transaction value of crypto assets in the country has skyrocketed to IDR 478,5 trillion from IDR 65 trillion in 2020.

The number of crypto customers has also reached 7,4 million, or double the previous year's 4 million. There are a number of types of crypto assets that have a lot of enthusiasts in Indonesia, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cardano.

The growth momentum also gave rise to the presence of crypto startups or blockchain new in Indonesia. A number of investors are starting to be interested in investing in this sector. In fact, foreign players have begun to spread their wings to the Indonesian market by seeing the enthusiasm of the market for crypto assets.

Referring to Pitchbook data as reported CNBC, venture capitalists have disbursed investments of $14 billion or the equivalent of Rp.202 trillion as of the second quarter of 2021. This total investment has increased dramatically compared to the same period the previous year of $600 million or Rp.8,6 trillion.