Pintu raised US $35 M in Series A to build Indonesia’s ‘largest crypto exchange’

Pintu, an Indonesian mobile-first cryptocurrency wallet, and trading platform, has raised US$35 million in an expanded Series A round-headed by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Alameda Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, and Castle Island Ventures were among the existing investors in the round.

Pantera Capital, Intudo Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures contributed the first tranche of this round in late May, bringing Pintu’s total Series A investment to US$41 million.

Pintu plans to use the new funds to hire new workers across all main departments and develop Indonesia’s “biggest cryptocurrency exchange.”

Pintu also intends to create new goods and services to enhance the user experience and expand into other asset classes, as well as to execute mass-market education programmes.

“As the fourth-most populous country in the world and with only 1-2 percent of Indonesians having exposure to cryptocurrencies, there is an immense opportunity for retail investors to gain access to diversified and dynamic investment opportunities through Pintu’s unique crypto assets trade offerings,” said Jeth Soetoyo, co-founder and CEO of Pintu.

Pintu, which was founded in 2020, offers millennials and retail customers answers to the problems associated with investing in crypto-assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. It “provides extensive trading tools, a simple user interface/UX, advanced security measures,” and instructional content to help investors trade, analyse, manage assets, and learn about cryptocurrencies.

Pintu further says that in the first half of 2021, their app downloads increased by 3.5x, accompanied by a 4x increase in active traders on the platform – all through organic development.

Trading is now available for 16 distinct dynamic cryptocurrencies on the site. It plans to introduce more currencies that are in great demand among investors, such as NFT tokens.

As of June 2021, the Indonesian Ministry of Trade said that there were over 6.6 million crypto investors in the nation, over double the country’s 2.2 million public stocks investors.

Government support has been a major tailwind for Indonesian crypto-assets growth, as it encourages laws that assure safe and responsible crypto-asset investment through legally regulated crypto-assets brokers like Pintu.

The Indonesian Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (Bappepti), which is part of the Ministry of Trade of the Republic of Indonesia, decided to regulate bitcoin and other crypto-assets as commodities in 2018.

Indodax and Binance-backed Tokocrypto are two more Indonesian cryptocurrency exchanges.