Citadel Securities takes in $1.15B investment from Sequoia and Paradigm

Published at: Jan. 12, 2022

Citadel Securities announced that VC firms Sequoia and Paradigm made a $1.15 billion combined minority investment in the market maker, bringing its valuation to $22 billion. The partnership with Paradigm, a Web3-focused investor, signaled Citadel Securities’ shift toward new asset classes such as crypto.

Sequoia, who led the round, with investment from Sequoia Heritage, Sequoia Capital Global Equities and the Global Growth Fund, will also get a seat on the Citadel Securities Board of Directors for Sequoia Partner Alfred Lin.

We are proud to announce that Sequoia and Paradigm have made a $1.15 billion minority investment in our firm. https://t.co/EIbWKduS1h

— Citadel Securities (@citsecurities) January 11, 2022

Related: Sequoia China leads $25M equity round for DeFi wallet DeBank

According to a statement, Citadel Securities will use the funds to further its growth of new products, markets and regions. Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao said:

“As technological innovation in financial markets becomes only more important, we see enormous opportunities to meet the needs of our clients across more markets and more products. Our partnership with Sequoia and Paradigm puts us in an even stronger position.”

Related: Ken Griffin says Bitcoin will be replaced by Ethereum-based currency

Historically, Ken Griffin has been as crypto skeptic, even claiming that crypto was “a jihadist call that we don’t believe in the dollar” only a few months ago. The arm of hedge fund Citadel is clearly embracing its expansion into cryptocurrency.

Tags
Related Posts
New DAO launches after $230M funding round including Peter Thiel, Alan Howard
BitDAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization, is launching after a $230 million funding round led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. BitDAO announced its DAO launch on Tuesday in conjunction with completing a private sale from initial partners led by Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Founders Fund. Other investors included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, among a total of more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry. Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, is a major initial proponent of BitDAO, pledging recurring …
Technology / June 16, 2021
A recap of last week’s ‘DeFi Marathon’ hosted by CT China
Cointelegraph China’s DeFi Marathon invited global DeFi projects, venture capitalists, and influential individuals to join a three-day online decentralized finance themed event, from Sep. 2 to Sep 4. Participants included Ontology, Darwinia network, Miniswap, and Dexe.network blockchain projects along with DeFi projects such as ForTube, Bifrost, Golff, Akropolis, and Nest protocol. CT China hosted 10 round tables and had in-depth discussions with a variety of guests about the DeFi ecosystem. The global online broadcast brought together speakers to discuss DeFi collateral, high gas transaction fees, DeFi insurance and how to hedge the risks in the market, the role of stable …
Blockchain / Sept. 9, 2020
Binance Smart Chain and Animoca Brands form $200M fund for GameFi projects
Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Animoca Brands are launching a $200 million investment program to incubate early cryptocurrency-focused gaming projects building on BSC. BSC and Animonica announced Dec. 6 that they are co-investing up to $100 million each to support game projects in the GameFi sector. One of the largest blockchain ecosystems, BSC will be investing from its $1 billion accelerator arm for decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT) and GameFi. The fund was set up earlier this year to extend BSC ecosystem services and drive mainstream adoption across the fintech sector. Animoca Brands is a major player in blockchain …
Adoption / Dec. 6, 2021
First steps: Basic tips for getting started investing in DeFi
Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have diversified investment opportunities in the crypto industry by facilitating novel and innovative passive income generation schemes. Delving a bit into how they work, DeFi systems are based on blockchain technology and run on programmable chains such as the BNB Chain and the Ethereum Network. The chains use decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) finance architectures to cut out the middleman and enable lending, borrowing and liquidity provision. This leads to higher interest rates compared to those provided by regulated financial institutions such as banks. For perspective, many regulated banks provide interest rates of less than one percent per …
Decentralization / April 14, 2022
Terra 2.0: A crypto project built on the ruins of $40 billion in investors' money
Terra remained the focus of the majority of headlines throughout May for its spiral collapse leading to a loss of over $40 billion in investors’ money. Despite some early resistance from the community and heavy backlash from the likes of Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, Terra co-founder Do Kwon managed to relaunch the collapsed network with a new chain called Terra 2.0 (Phoenix-1). The amended proposal for the relaunch of the network by increasing the genesis liquidity, which introduces a new liquidity profile for pre-attack Luna Classic (LUNC) holders and decreases the distribution to post-attack TerraUSD Classic (USTC) holders, was …
Decentralization / June 3, 2022