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Cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round to expand into new businesses and geographies.

The round was backed by Pantera Capital, Fidelity’s Avon Ventures, and Sino Global Capital, among others. Existing investors Blockchain.com Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the round. 

In a note to The Block, Wintermute said that it is “highly profitable,” but needed the fresh injection of capital to beef up its balance sheet to woo larger counter-parties to its over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform. The firm said that the round was “substantially oversubscribed,” noting that some employees also participated. 

Wintermute makes markets across 50 cryptocurrency exchanges and traded more than $30 billion in December 2020 alone. The firm said it is on track to double that amount this month.

Wintermute is currently piloting its own OTC request-for-quote platform with several beta counter-parties and plans to launch the service within the first quarter of the year, CEO Evgeny Gaevoy told The Block. He added that the entrance of new institutional capital has made this a more attractive opportunity for the firm. In recent months, well-known investors ranging from Anthony Scaramaccui to Stanley Druckenmiller have publicized their recent bets on cryptocurrency. 

“Since we have some of the most competitive pricing in the market, we were literally pulled into this business by our counterparties and partners that we work with,” said Gaevoy. “The algorithms we use for OTC are the same we use for our proprietary trading, so we have an advantage when it comes to pricing.”

The firm continues to see an opportunity in the burgeoning market for decentralized finance (DeFi), which has been a “major growth point.” Wintermute also plans to expand its operations to Asia where it will launch a physical presence in Singapore this quarter. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Adult entertainment website Pornhub has added four new coins to its list of supported crypto payment options — XRP, BNB, USDC, and DOGE — The Block has checked on Wednesday. 

The move means Pornhub’s more than 120 million daily visitors can now pay for premium subscriptions in the four digital assets. Notably, Pornhub has removed the support of privacy-oriented coin Dash and PumaPay token, which were supported as of mid-December. That suggests that the changes have been made over the past month. 

The latest revisions increase the number of Pornhub’s supported coins to sixteen from fourteen before (see screenshot). It should be noted that Pornhub only supports crypto as the payment option for some countries, including the U.S., the U.K., and Singapore. While for some EU nations, such as Germany, it supports bank wires.

Pornhub doesn’t support credit card payments anymore after facing a ban from Visa and Mastercard last month. The two payment giants cut ties with Pornhub following accusations that the pornographic website showed child abuse and rape videos. The allegations stemmed from an investigation by an opinion columnist of the New York Times. Pornhub has denied the allegations.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.