Japan‘s SoftBank Group Corp has invested $200 million in Mercado Bitcoin, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Latin America, said Roberto Dagnoni, executive chairman and chief executive officer of 2TM Group, the trading platform’s parent company.

The investment, raised in a Series B funding round, was made through SoftBank Latin America Fund and represents the Japanese multinational company’s largest investment in a Latin American crypto company. As a result of the investment, 2TM said its valuation reached $2.1 billion.

The SoftBank capital raise comes at a time when investor sentiment on cryptocurrencies has soured amid regulatory crackdowns in China, Britain and Japan. That has led to outflows from crypto investment products and funds the last few weeks.

Dagnoni, however, was unfazed by the current slump in cryptocurrencies. “We are strong believers in the fundamentals of crypto,” Dagnoni told Reuters in a phone interview.

Mercado Bitcoin will use the funds to scale its operations, expand offerings, and invest in infrastructure to meet rising demand for crypto in the region, 2TM said in a statement. “The platform is quite integrated. So custody is very important in releasing the power of the institutional market,” Dagnoni said in the interview.

                Source: Reuters