Justin Bieber, Snoop Dog And Maria Sharapova Invest In Crypto Startup MoonPay

JAKARTA - Cryptocurrency payments startup MoonPay has raised USD 87 million (IDR 1.2 trillion) from more than 60 well-known investors. These investors include singer Justin Bieber, rapper Snoop Dogg, tennis player Maria Sharapova and actor Bruce Willis as instrumental in developing non-fungible tokens (NFT) for content creation and fan engagement.

The investment is part of the company's Series A round, which was disclosed in November last year with a company value of USD 3.4 billion (IDR 48.8 trillion), MoonPay said on Wednesday.

According to Alex McDougall, managing director at fund manager 3iQ Digital Assets, more than 600 crypto startups have seen more than $12.5 billion in venture capital funding so far this year.

MoonPay, which provides payment infrastructure for crypto and NFT transactions. “We expect content creators to increasingly use NFT to market their work and engage with fans,” said MoonPay chief executive Ivan Soto-Wright.

NFT is a type of crypto asset that uses blockchain technology to record who owns a digital file, which can be an image, video, or text.

Other investors in the company include rapper Aubrey Drake Graham and Adel Future Nur's company Dreamcrew, Gwyneth Paltrow's Kinship Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, a venture capital firm backed by Guy Oseary Sound Ventures, singer Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd and his manager Amir Esmailian.