Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading firm founded by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, has led a $35 million investment in the automated crypto trading app Stacked.
On Dec. 9, the startup officially announced the successful completion of a Series A funding round co-led by Alameda and Mirana Ventures, a venture partner of Bybit exchange and BitDAO.
The new funding will reportedly help Stacked grow its 40-person team to over 100 employees in 2022 and continue scaling its suite crypto portfolios and automated lending products.
According to Alameda Research Ventures’ partner Brian Lee, Alameda started investing in Stacked over a year ago and is now sure about their ability to provide a “unique and simple investment experience for retail investors.”
“The ability to give users some guardrails when building a portfolio, while also allowing that user to custody funds on their preferred exchange is something investors really need,” Lee noted.
Launched in April 2020, Stacked is a web-based application allowing users to access vetted trading strategies and investment portfolios via pre-built stacks, which are modeled after popular crypto indexes, hedge funds and other investor portfolios. The platform plans to go fully mobile within six months.
According to Stacked co-founder and CEO Joel Birch, stacks including decentralized finance (DeFi) coins are among the most popular on the platform. According to Stacked’s data at the time of writing, nonfungible token (NFT)-based stacks are the top-performing stacks, including a mixture of large- and small-cap coins providing exposure to NFT markets.
Stacked’s chief revenue officer Alan Eschweiler stressed the importance of major companies backing the firm. “It’s no accident that two of the largest exchanges in the crypto space co-lead this investment round. These exchanges, and others, have been key partners of ours since day one, introducing their users to more automated tools for investing,” he said.
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The news comes as Bankman-Fried’s exchange FTX is reportedly looking to raise $1.5 billion for its global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange and U.S. affiliate FTX.US. Tech-focused publication The Information reported Dec. 3 that the new fundraise would value FTX and FTX.US at $32 billion and $8 billion, respectively.