Crypto Custodian Fireblocks Eclipses $1B Raised With $550M Series E

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  • “We think it’s inevitable that every busi­ness will need to work with cryp­to or dig­i­tal assets,” Fire­blocks CEO Michael Shaulov CEO said
  • The round was co-led by D1 Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Spark Capital

Dig­i­tal asset cus­to­di­an Fire­blocks has raised a whop­ping $550 mil­lion round, bring­ing its total fundrais­ing haul to more than $1 billion. 

Fire­blocks is now val­ued at more than $8 bil­lion after the Series E round. CEO Michael Shaulov told Block­works it’s “inevitable that every busi­ness will need to work with cryp­to or dig­i­tal assets.”

CEO Michael Shaulov told Block­works the com­pa­ny — val­ued at more than $8 bil­lion after the Series E raise — thinks it’s “inevitable that every busi­ness will need to work with cryp­to or dig­i­tal assets.”

To that end, the firm grew its insti­tu­tion­al clients from 150 to 800 last year — an increase of 433%. The com­pa­ny expand­ed its pres­ence in the Asia Pacif­ic region, as well as Europe, the Mid­dle East and Africa. 

The com­pa­ny plans to hire engi­neer­ing and cus­tomer oper­a­tions staffers with the cap­i­tal, Shaulov said. 

“Of course, we’re start­ing to see appli­ca­tions that are out­side of the tra­di­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions which we find the most excit­ing and where we’re plan­ning to take a big chunk of the funds to allo­cate resources there,” he added. 

The hot fundrais­ing demand stems from accel­er­at­ing insti­tu­tion­al adap­ta­tion of cryp­to, as well as cor­po­ra­tions look­ing to build, and safe­keep, first-time cryp­to prod­ucts, the CEO said. 

The round was co-led by D1 Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Spark Cap­i­tal with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Gen­er­al Atlantic, Index Ven­tures, Mam­moth, Cap­i­talG, Altime­ter, Iconiq Strate­gic Part­ners, Canapi Ven­tures and Parafi Growth Fund. 

Fire­blocks now has $45 bil­lion of cus­todied assets. Ear­li­er this month, Fire­blocks joined Aave Arc to launch a per­mis­sioned ver­sion of its decen­tral­ized finance liq­uid­i­ty pro­to­col so that insti­tu­tion­al play­ers could join in DeFi, Block­works pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed

“Long term we are invest­ing in devel­op­ing the eas­i­est to use plat­form for cryp­to oper­a­tions,  expand­ing the Fire­blocks Net­work, and enabling sup­port for NFTs, DeFi, pay­ments, and tok­eniza­tion,” Shaulov said. 

A top pri­or­i­ty for Fire­blocks this year is to make a big push into Web3. Its plat­form sup­ports over 20 blockchains and 1,000 cryp­tocur­ren­cies with $2 tril­lion in dig­i­tal assets trans­ferred. It pow­ers use cas­es across trad­ing, gam­ing, NFTs, dig­i­tal secu­ri­ties and pay­ments with a focus on tran­si­tion­ing the dig­i­tal asset econ­o­my from Web2 to Web3. 

“Cryp­to will con­tin­ue to dri­ve key inno­va­tions in the tra­di­tion­al finan­cial sec­tor,” Shaulov said. “By the end of 2022, we believe a major­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions will have either already launched or will be close to launch­ing new cryp­to prod­ucts and services.”


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  • Jacque­lyn Melinek

    Jacque­lyn Melinek is a New York-based reporter cov­er­ing fund­ing, decen­tral­ized finance (DeFi) and decen­tral­ized autonomous orga­ni­za­tions (DAOs). She pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on ener­gy mar­kets for S&P Glob­al Platts and Bloomberg News and is pub­lished in over 65 news out­lets. She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill with a degree in Media and Journalism.

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