Fomo Raises $75 Million for Consumer Crypto Trading App

The company announced its Series B round Monday (June 22), noting that it comes as the company is marking more than $4 billion in trading volume on its year-old platform. Beyond that, fomo said, more than 68,000 users have made their first crypto purchases using the app through Apple Pay, to the tune of $25 million.

“We are on the precipice of the largest financial revolution since trading was computerized in the 1970s. Over the following decades, trading on the NYSE, NASDAQ, and other legacy exchanges became entirely digital,” the company said.

“A similar revolution is happening today. Blockchain networks are global from day one and fully transparent, enabling social experiences that were never possible in traditional finance applications. Financial assets are moving on-chain, and entirely new asset classes are being born, yet most of the world’s consumers still lack access to these nascent financial products.”

A report on the round by The Block said the new funding values fomo at $550 million, with the company looking to increase its headcount and pursue acquisitions.

In other digital asset news, PYMNTS wrote recently about a battle brewing around the world of blockchain finance.

“Banks view stablecoins as a new form of private money that lacks the stabilizing infrastructure developed around banking over the past century,” that report said.

“Stablecoin advocates counter that many of those protections emerged only after innovation occurred, and that competition from blockchain-based payments could ultimately produce a more efficient financial system.”

In many respects, the report added, the cryptocurrency sector has already won the first stage of the debate. The GENIUS Act regulating stablecoins became law last summer and is in its rulemaking period. 

Still, the federal rulemaking process is bringing up some of the traditional financial sector’s deepest-held concerns related to stablecoins and digital assets as banking interest groups work with federal banking regulators to operationalize the GENIUS Act’s implementation.

Instead of arguing that stablecoins should be segregated from mainstream finance, banking groups are now fixed on a narrower but consequential claim. Even under a strong regulatory framework, stablecoins present what they say are key structural vulnerabilities that differ from traditional bank deposits. 

“These four vulnerabilities relate to stablecoin runs, liquidity shocks, contagion, and systemic funding disruption,” PYMNTS added. “Regulation can mitigate these vulnerabilities, according to the banking sector, but it cannot fully remove them.”