Funding Roundup: Stablecoin fundraising and M&A activity heats up
Two stablecoin firms made announcements this week, with one raising an undisclosed amount and Paxos expanding into the EU through an acquisition
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Tether made moves this week, investing in Quantoz alongside Kraken and Fabric Ventures. The team did not disclose the amount invested.
Alongside the announcement, the Dutch-based stablecoin company also announced it was launching euro and US dollar stablecoins.
“EURQ and USDQ are respectively euro and US dollar-referenced E-Money Tokens (EMTs), issued on the Ethereum blockchain by Quantoz, an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) authorised and supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch Central Bank,” a press release said.
Read more from our opinion section: The time for US stablecoin regulation is now
Both EURQ and USDQ were listed by Bitfinex and Kraken earlier this week, making both available to “eligible clients.”
“Europeans speak loudly about MICAR making stablecoin issuance seamless in Europe and whilst there are clearer rules, there are very few players that can pull it off at scale,” Fabric ventures general partner Anil Hansjee said in a press release.
Read more from our opinion section: MiCA compliance will drive Europe into a crypto consolidation frenzy
“Think regulatory licenses, tier 1 banking partners with adequate liquidity ratios and balance sheets, blockchain expertise, state of the art and scalable compliance onboarding, onchain transaction monitoring, treasury and risk management, security DNA, let alone an ability to convince major European exchanges to list you and market makers to provide liquidity, as well as dapps to build use cases around you,” Hansjee continued.
Not to be outdone, another stablecoin company, Paxos, had its own news to share earlier this week.
Paxos announced that it acquired Membrane Finance, also for an undisclosed amount. The purchase sets Paxos up to be a regulated entity in the EU, where it plans to issue MiCA-compliant stablecoins.
Membrane is a Finnish company with an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license.
Other notable funding rounds:
- Monkey Tilt announced a $30 million Series A led by Pantera Capital. Hack VC and Polychain also participated.
- Valantis Labs raised $7.5 million across pre-seed and seed rounds led by Cyber Fund, Kraken Ventures and Seven X Ventures.
- OpenLayer said it raised $5 million, with a16z’s CSX, Geometry and Spartan all contributing.
- Barter DeFi announced a $3 million seed round led by Maven 11 Capital.
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