There’s a lot of happening with the world’s largest crypto exchange, led by billionaire Changpeng Zhao, Binance. News number one is that Binance.US, the American franchise of Binance.com, announced its success in completing a seed round of $200 million. Although the company launched in 2019, this is the company’s first fundraising, and it gives the 2.5-year-old company unicorn status with a $4.5 billion enterprise value. Investors include RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, Original Capital, VanEck, and Circle Ventures. The company also brought in firms explicitly focused on diversity and inclusion such as Gaingels and Gold House as part of an effort to its pronounced goals of decentralization, equality and financial opportunity for all.

The funds come at an opportune time for the company, as the venture capital industry remains in doldrums because of continuously rising cost of capital due to world’s largest central banks’ monetary austerity. This is especially sensible issue to crypto companies. Even after the March recovery, the total crypto market capitalization has still lost over $100 million in 2022. Still, venture firm Paradigm raised a $2.5 billion fund in November, Haun Ventures recently secured $1 billion for their first round, and Andreessen Horowitz is rumored to be closing a massive $4.5 billion fund.

News number two. According to a new report from Reuters, Binance is currently building a team that will “work on features like discovery and cryptocurrencies that can be useful for Twitter.” Binance intends to be more proactive and vocal in its long-lasting dispute with Elon Musk regarding making Twitter more friendly to the cryptocurrency platform.

The Binance team is reportedly tackling various issues related to integrating the cryptocurrency with the social media platform, including how to deal with crypto spambots. Lately, crypto bots have been a particularly serious problem, as Musk and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao have often impersonated them.

This is not the first time Binance has expedited the buyout of Musk. In May, the exchange invested $500 million to help Musk acquire ad hoc networks. Zhao himself has previously stated that it will be disappointing if the takeover, while perhaps impossible for some time, does not eventually happen. “If Elon makes the approach, we commit… if he doesn’t, we’re done.” He also said that Binance “hopes to somehow properly manage its contribution to Twitter.”

As we all know, Musk took control of Twitter on Friday, October 28, afternoon and promptly fired four of the company's top executives, including then-CEO Parag Agrawal. Twitter has already announced that previously suspended accounts will soon be reinstated, most notably those of US President Donald Trump. Musk's takeover of the platform on a phasing out scale is a positive development for the crypto industry, which tends to use Twitter as its cultural hub.