Temasek Holdings’ venture capital arm, Vertex Ventures, has invested in Binance for the purpose of developing a fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchange in Singapore. Binance is a digital asset trading platform operator.
Just how much Vertex Ventures has invested in Binance has not been revealed. But Binance, a company that primarily handles trades between digital tokens, is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges around the globe today.
The investment will be a joint initiative of Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India and Vertex Ventures China. A statement announcing the investment said that it is also aimed to support various other fiat-to-cryptocurrency gateways and services throughout the region of Southeast Asia.
Vertex is the oldest venture-capital company in the region, but making such an investment in the market of cryptocurrencies is a new undertaking for Vertex and an acknowledgment that the industry has continued to gain ground. The industry has begun to see an inflow money from established institutes such as Goldman Sachs, which, along with Galaxy Digital Ventures, has put funding intoBitGo Holdings, a cryptocurrency custodian start-up.
Billionaire Mike Novogratz from Galaxy Digital has long been a champion of cryptocurrencies, however.
Binance, established only a year ago, intends to allow its users to swap cryptocurrencies into Singaporean dollars. But the company has faced legal trouble in New York, Hong Kong, and Japan.
While more well-known financial institutions are investing in cryptocurrency, problems regarding regulation and market stability plague the industry. Bitcoin, which reached a high of nearly US$20,000 in December 2017, has lost nearly two-thirds of its value.