Crypto exchange Backpack, founded by ex-FTX and Alameda employees, raises $17 million in Series A

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Backpack, a crypto exchange and digital wallet platform founded by former FTX and Alameda Research employees, raised $17 million in Series A funding.
Placeholder VC lead the round, with participation from Hashed, Robot Ventures, Amber Group, Wintermute and Selini.

Backpack, a crypto exchange founded by former FTX and Alameda Research employees, raised $17 million in Series A funding.

The web3-focused venture firm Placeholder VC led the round, which also had participation from Hashed, Robot Ventures, Amber Group, Wintermute and Selini.

The fresh financing brings Backpack's total valuation to $120 million, the firm told Bloomberg.

Backpack operates a crypto exchange, not available in the U.S., as well as a digital wallet platform and NFT collection called Mad Lads. The firm was co-founded by Armani Ferrante, an early employee at the bankrupt crypto trading firm Alameda Research, and Can Sun, prior general counsel to FTX who testified in the trial against the exchange's founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Backpack is based in Dubai, where it launched its exchange after obtaining a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in October 2023.

Mad Lads has a floor price of 185 SOL, worth around $20,700, according to the Solana NFT platform Magic Eden.

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MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.