Bitcoin Firm NYDIG Raises $1 Billion From Investors

Bitcoin has continued to amaze industry watchers with its ability to attract new investment anytime a huge fall in its price occurs.

Despite some major governments' stance against large-scale adoption, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have always found a way to attract the needed investment to drive their market share value upwards.

With bitcoin hitting an all-time high of $64,000 some months ago, investors have decided to add the acquisition of this highly volatile asset as a part of their investment portfolio. This assertion was made because of how rewarding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have succeeded in making a lot of people millionaires overnight.

Some companies that have been looking at multiple ways to increase their profit base have accepted bitcoin as a more profitable asset than safe-haven assets like gold.

The intriguing thing about the volatility of bitcoin is that whenever a fall is occasioned by either government anti-cryptocurrency policies are implemented or there is a whale shark pull out of funds, it always finds a way to bounce back.

In just the last two weeks, the price of bitcoin fell to below $45,000 from a height of $63,000. It took companies such as the New York-based bitcoin firm NYDIG to promote a bullish run in the market.

One of those strategically orchestrated moves that helped stabilize the price at $47,750 is the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), which succeeded in raising $1 billion to drive home its objective of large scale bitcoin adoption.

This move is just one of the several moves by cryptocurrency startups that have succeeded in raising more than $7 billion this year alone.

Earlier known as New York Digital Investment Group, the firm runs a bitcoin trading, brokerage, custody, and asset-management business that caters to institutional investors.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), participants in the investment round included Morgan Stanley, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., and New York Life Insurance Co., NYDIG. All three firms are stalwarts of traditional finance and insurance in the USA and are currently investors in NYDIG.

The round was led by WestCap Group, the growth-equity firm founded by technology investor Laurence Tosi, a former chief financial officer of Airbnb Inc. and Blackstone Group. As part of the round, WestCap became a new investor in NYDIG, as did point-of-sale lender Affirm Holdings Inc. and financial-technology group Fiserv Inc. NYDIG, founded in 2017, hasn’t previously released its valuation and issued bitcoin for asset-management clients.

Investors' bullish momentum has continued to drive needed investment into crypto startups, with some betting on a global adoption despite its volatility structure any moment soon.

The report from WSJ continued that in November, Digital Currency Group Inc. raised $700 million in a funding round that valued the crypto conglomerate at $10 billion. Crypto exchange FTX Trading Ltd. raised $900 million in July and then closed an additional $420 million funding round in October that valued the firm at $25 billion.

In December 2020, NYDIG facilitated MassMutual’s purchase of $100 million in bitcoin, a deal that signaled growing mainstream acceptance of digital currencies and helped ignite a huge bull market in crypto during the following months. As part of that transaction, MassMutual took a minority stake in NYDIG.

As part of its large-scale adoption program, NYDIG will sell technology to banks, credit unions, and merchant banks to help them embed bitcoin services on their websites or smartphones, and transition them to fully digitalized financial platforms.