American Express' Venture Arm Invests in a Cryptocurrency Trading Platform

American Express says its venture arm, Amex Ventures has invested in Falconx the cryptocurrency trading platform that focuses on serving institutional trading clients. Amex’s investment, which was announced during a record-breaking week for bitcoin, underscores the credit card issuer’s desire to cash in on the growing institutional interest in cryptocurrencies.

Amex Venture’s Long Term Interest in Cryptos

According to a report, Amex Ventures’ acquisition of a stake in Falconx is the culmination of an investigation into cryptocurrencies that took an unknown number of years. In comments made following the announcement, Harshul Sanghi, the global head of Amex briefly explains the rationale behind the financial services giant’s interest in crypto startups. He says:

Amex Ventures invests in startups as a way to better understand emerging areas of the payments ecosystem.

Meanwhile, before the investment by Amex for an undisclosed amount, the crypto start-up had reportedly raised $17 million in May “from the likes of Accel, Coinbase Ventures and a fund affiliated with Fidelity Investments’ parent company.” Since then, Falconx is reporting that its revenues have grown substantially and the platform now handles “around $3 billion in transaction volume monthly and has 250 institutional clients.”

Meanwhile, the same report quotes Raghu Yarlagadda, Falconx’s chief executive and co-founder who claims that the start-up is seeing an “increasing number of traditional service providers and hedge funds have become interested in cryptocurrencies.” The reported interest by the latter is believed to be the key driver of the current crypto market bull run.

Institutional Growth

As reported by News.bitcoin.com, BTC touched a new all-time high of $23,777 on December 17 less than 24 hours after breaching the $20,000 mark. With many bitcoiners now expecting the BTC price to continue surging having passed its previous resistance level, more institutional investors are expected to join in the crypto buying and holding frenzy.

In the meantime, as this is happening, Yarlagadda remarks that Falconx will be “at the front and center of seeing this institutional growth.”