Cryptocurrency custody firm Fireblocks has raised a $550 million funding round, valuing the technology provider at over $8 billion.
Charting Fireblocks’ recent slew of funding announcements shows the anticipated demand among investors for a slice of clever technologies like multi-party-computation (MPC), a way of sharding private keys when managing the safekeeping of digital assets. Not to mention the company’s increase in clients from 150 to over 800 over the course of 2021.
“It’s pretty aggressive growth, and we have a lot of clients from very different use cases and domains, from traditional financial institutions to leading hedge funds, exchanges, neo banks, gaming companies, payment providers and so on,” Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov said in an interview. “So we are putting a lot of investment into our client support functions across the board to catch up and to provide all those people the service that they need.”
Read more: Crypto Custody Firm Fireblocks Raises $310M at $2B Valuation
The Series E round was co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital with participation from General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Mammoth, Google-linked CapitalG, Altimeter, Iconiq Strategic Partners, Canapi Ventures and Parafi Growth Fund.
Crypto Winter?
In light of the recent slump in crypto prices, might 2021 appear in retrospect to have been a particularly febrile period, with its gushing investments and rocketing valuations?
“We started the company in July 2018, and if you look at the Bitcoin price chart back then it was one of the worst times,” Shaulov said. “While the market right now is fueled by speculation and leverage and is inherently volatile, when you look at new use cases around payments, gaming and NFTs, there’s nothing speculative about these projects. That’s what we came here to build.”
On Wednesday, crypto exchange FTX US announced a $400 million funding round. It was also valued at $8 billion.
