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Bahrain-Based Cryptocurrency Exchange Rain Raises $110 Million
The financial injection provided by the Series B funding round is supposed to help Rain double the number of its employees, which currently sits at 400.
After raising $6 million in a Series A led by MEVP in January 2021, Bahrain-based cryptocurrency exchange Rain has another reason to celebrate: the recent $110 million Series B funding round.
Co-led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Cadenza Ventures, and others, the round is one of the largest ones for any startup in the Middle East & North Africa.
“We are very excited about this funding opportunity as it allows us to continue conversations with regulators across the MENA region, Turkey, and Pakistan about the benefits and potential of cryptocurrency” stated the co-founding team. “It will also support our overarching mission of providing education and access to cryptocurrency to all of our supported markets”.
Rain was founded in 2017 by Abdullah Almoaiqel, AJ Nelson, Joseph Dallago, and Yehia Badawy. The exchange allows customers from the Middle East to easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. So far, it has processed transactions worth more than $1.9 billion, serving 185,000 users across 50 countries.
The financial injection provided by the Series B funding round is supposed to help the exchange double the number of its employees, which currently sits at 400.
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“We believe that Rain is a crucial piece of the puzzle for bringing the Middle East deeper into the new crypto economy” said Casey Caruso, investing partner at Paradigm.
Indeed, the interest in cryptocurrency has been booming across the MENA region, with both individual retail investors and institutions embracing cryptocurrencies as the future of finance.
Dubai, for example, wants to become the world’s cryptocurrency capital by creating a comprehensive ecosystem for cryptocurrencies and providers of related services in the form of a special crypto zone at the Dubai World Trade Center.