A part of the $113 million grant will be utilized to support Pintu Academy.
Indonesia-based crypto-related application Pintu has stated that it secured a $113M Series B funding round. During the fundraising, Pintu saw participation from several VC firms such as Ventures, Lightspeed, Pantera Capital, and an investment firm dubbed Northstar Group.
With such a significant fund, Pintu will introduce new tokens and fire up products that will help the exchange maintain its role as one of the most prominent crypto-based apps in Indonesia. It also plans to develop additional features and support for blockchain technology.
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On top of that, part of the capital will be used to aid its Pintu Academy, a program that seeks to “help traders understand both the opportunities and risks of crypto investing and promote healthier and sustainable trading practices.” Lastly, the crypto app will also focus on hiring more employees, as it already doubled its staff to 200 employees last year.
The cryptocurrency exchange Pintu was founded in 2020 and is defined as “Indonesia’s leading homegrown crypto assets platform.” Currently, the mobile app is licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (Bappebti) under the Ministry of Trade and supports over 50 different cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
In fact, according to Pintu Chief Marketing Officer Timothius Martin, Indonesia has more than 12 million traders, compared to 7 million domestic public equity shareholders. He additionally stated:
“The numbers of crypto investors in Indonesia have doubled from 6 million at the beginning of 2021 to over 12 million in February 2022 – which is about [twice] the number of public equity investors in the country.”
On top of that, the CEO of Pintu Jeth Soetoyo also expanded on the importance of cryptocurrencies in the country:
“We believe that crypto adoption in Indonesia is only in its beginning stages, and educating users on the fundamentals is critical to ensuring this growth continues in a healthy way.”
Earlier this year, ADDX, a Singapore-based private market exchange, secured a pre-Series B funding round from several Asian organizations, including UOB, Krungsri Bank, Hamilton Lane, and the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET).
In other news, the government of Indonesia started implementing taxes on digital assets on May 1st. According to an official statement, the reason behind the tax is that crypto-assets are defined as "commodities" and not "currencies" by Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade.
