The PayPal of Cryptocurrency! MoonPay's latest round of funding is joined by a host of celebrities

Cryptocurrency payments company MoonPay said in a press release Wednesday that more than 60 celebrities, including musicians and actors, provided the company with about $87 million in its latest round of funding, or 16 percent of the total funding for the round. The startup is said to have raised a total of $555 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management and Koutu Capital Management at the end of last year, when the company was valued at $3.4 billion.

The list of investors is known to include celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber, Matthew McConaughey, Bruce Willis and Paris Hilton. It is believed that MoonPay's latest funding round shows signs of growing interest in cryptocurrency fintech among the upper echelons of society. Non-homogenized tokens (NFTs) and the blockchain technology behind them are said to have the potential to disrupt the music, film, fashion and gaming industries by allowing creators to obtain financing, control their intellectual property and sell their work directly to consumers without the intervention of intermediaries.

MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said NFT offers artists and creators a way to manage royalties, and MoonPay sees a completely different operating model in the entertainment industry.

Previously, MoonPay described itself as a kind of PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) in the cryptocurrency economy and supported transactions between individuals and crypto-asset companies, such as NFT's underwriters. The company was originally created to design channels that would allow users to buy and sell digital assets via credit and debit cards.