MoonPay, a cryptocurrency payments startup, has raised more than $86 million from a who’s who of A-list celebrities.
The new round of investment will help propel the company toward its goal of becoming the PayPal of cryptocurrency, bringing its valuation to $3.4 billion.
Celebrities involved include Ashton Kutcher, Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Willis, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Steve Aoki.
Other stars, including Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton, have previous experience in crypto.
According to MoonPay’s CEO, Ivan Soto-Wright, the company has its sights on the entertainment industry and wants to help creators make the most out of the nascent blockchain technology.
“Let’s build a diversified portfolio of incredible people that represent different industries and let’s talk about their use cases for their intellectual property,” he said.
The company creates an exclusive platform for users to trade digital assets and NFTs using their bank cards.
“A lot of companies might open a very small portion of their rounds, but we wanted to take on meaningful checks from these folks, because we want them to be a part of this story and shape product direction,” said Soto-Wright.
MoonPay will create ‘opportunities’ for celebrities
He added that the firm can help celebrities “understand opportunities around Web3, crypto, and the metaverse.”
Crypto payment firms have attracted much interest and money lately. Last week, payments firm Wyre was snapped up by Bolt for $1.5 billion after racking up over 15 million customers.
In Asia, XanPool raised $27 million in a round led by Valar Ventures. The Hong Kong-based firm has been carving a niche for itself in the on-ramp industry since its launch in 2019.
Mainstream payment platforms now see an opportunity in the ecosystem and are turning their attention to cryptocurrencies. Stripe sent the ecosystem buzzing when it recently announced it would accept cryptocurrency as a means of payment again, four years after it dropped support for bitcoin.
The company previously had a rocky relationship with cryptos after it ended Bitcoin support back in 2018 citing that the asset was “less useful” for payments.