eToro Just Received a $2.5 Billion Valuation

The popular social trading platform, attached to the face of American actor and activist Alec Baldwin, has surpassed a valuation milestone of $2.5 billion. This is still far from Robinhood’s upcoming IPO valuation of $20 billion, but not all value lies in valuation.

eToro Untroubled by 2020’s Woes

By combining the power of social networking with intuitive mobile experience, eToro was bound to go head-to-head with the stock trading pioneer for the masses – Robinhood. While their valuations may differ, these two top stock trading apps surprisingly have a similar sized user base.

Although Robinhood rightfully boasts over 13 million users, as it was the first one to eliminate trading fees, eToro is right alongside it, with 13 million global registered users. Moreover, eToro is loved by traders of all types for its unique CopyTrader feature. With it, you can learn what professional traders with high-performance ratios are doing and why—but you can also automatically copy their trades.

Moreover, eToro, as a social trading platform, produces regular educational content and market analysis.

2020 Was the Year of eToro’s Biggest Expansion

A lot has changed for the Israeli company in a year’s period:

• It acquired Firmo smart contract startup in March, in order to tokenize all of its assets.
• It overtook Robinhood in launching a debit card in the UK, by acquiring Marq Millions Ltd in July.
• It became a FINRA member in October, allowing you to conduct social stock trading in the USA, alongside crypto trading.

eToro continues to be led by Yoni Assia, his brother Ronen and David Ring. It also continues to expand and upgrade its copy-trading and multi-asset financial services. eToro has so far covered the markets of Australia, the UK, the US, Israel, and Cyprus. 

Since its last public funding, when it reached $100 million in 2018, it gained over 13 million users and now employs over 1000 personnel across 10 offices globally. Of course, being an Israeli company, eToro holds most of its employees in Israel, about 600.

eToro Tripled Its Valuation in Just Two Years

After the $100 million funding round led by China Minsheng Financial, eToro reached an $800 million valuation in 2018. The pandemic did not only NOT slow down the company, but it raised its user count significantly. This aligns with the trend of increased daily stock trading in the period of government-issued stimulus checks and forced social isolation. 

According to the local Israeli publication Calcalist, this week eToro joined the Israeli unicorn club. In Israel, “unicorns” are private tech companies, in this case FinTech, which are funded exclusively by Israelis and valuated over $1 billion. eToro surpassed this threshold by currently being valued at $2.5 billion.

It owes this valuation spike to the recent acquisition of shares in the secondary market. This US-based institutional investor remains unnamed, but the total sum was at least $50 million. For its next funding round, a source close to Calcalist speculates that eToro’s valuation will rise even further, just like it did after the first funding round.

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