Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_62ba247b75669" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>PolySign plans to launch settlement layer PolyNet in the first quarter of 2023</li>
 <li>The funding round follows the company’s raise of $53 million in May 2021</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Blockchain infrastructure provider <a href="https://polysign.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">PolySign</a> has raised an additional $53 million as it seeks to eventually offer instant and automatic settlements for a range of cryptoassets.



Participants in the round included hedge fund Brevan Howard, crypto market maker GSR and Cowen Digital. The latter business, which financial services firm Cowen <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/financial-firm-cowen-unveils-digital-assets-unit/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launched in March</a>, offers custody solutions via Cowen’s partnership with PolySign subsidiary Standard Custody and Trust Company.



The capital was primarily used for the acquisition of fund administrator MG Stover, which the firm revealed in April. The purchase of the company, which had $40 billion in digital assets under administration at the time, accelerates the company’s product development service enhancements for institutional investors and asset managers, PolySign said in a statement.



PolySign CEO Jack McDonald told Blockworks the Series C round funding would also enable the company to add engineers, accountants and client service teams, as well as accelerate its technology spend.



In the short term, PolySign seeks to continue focusing on its custody offerings through Standard Custody and Trust Company as well as its fund administration business through MG Stover. Its third core product, McDonald said, is PolyNet, a settlement layer that would offer instant and automatic settlement for a range of assets. PolySign expects to launch the latter offering in the first quarter of next year.



PolySign has also secured a $25 million credit facility with Boathouse Capital, it said Tuesday.



Emphasizing the importance of institutional investors in the digital asset space, McDonald said in a statement, “A better platform for custody and fund administration is necessary to serve their unique needs and help expand the market.”



The funding round follows PolySign’s raise of $53 million in May 2021. Cowen led that Series B round with a $25 million strategic investment and was joined by Blockchain.com, Race Capital, Sandia Holdings and PilotRock Investments.



McDonald declined to comment on PolySign’s valuations after each round, but according to private-markets data provider Pitchbook, the latest raise pushed the firm’s valuation over $500 million.



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PolySign Nets $53M To Improve Services for Institutions, Asset Managers

Aaron Ahmadi

A recent trend in crypto hiring has confirmed an exodus of top talent from TradFi into the digital assets space that will surely spur mass adoption.



Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at digital asset investment firm Coinshares, <a href="https://twitter.com/Melt_Dem/status/1391829838516957189?s=20&amp;t=C1OUUm9AJQD9kWYgMUt16Q" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">spoke</a> early last year of the likelihood of talent leaving TradFi: “Crypto is going to drain banks of their top talent.”



Demirors appears to have been correct. A <a href="https://www.heidrick.com/en/insights/crypto-digital-assets/from-financial-services-to-blockchain-and-crypto-how-executives-are-making-the-switch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a> carried out by executive search firm Heidrick &amp; Struggles found that almost half of respondents had entered the crypto sector from investment banking.



Crypto companies have more money to spend with <a href="https://fortune.com/2021/11/18/vc-crypto-funds-are-getting-bigger-so-are-the-opportunities/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">venture capital funding</a> pouring into the sector. The digital assets arena is also expanding and has much greater depth when it comes to opportunities than heretofore through the development of Web3, decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain-based gaming. Meanwhile, compensation at TradFi institutions is up considerably as they are now scrambling to compete for talent.



Coinbase alone <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/coinbase-plans-to-hire-2-000-more-employees-this-year?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=Drake+has+just+won+%241+5+million+in+Bitcoin++here+s+how&amp;utm_campaign=Feb+15+Newsletter_FF&amp;vgo_ee=rghD" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plans</a> on hiring 2,000 people in 2022. Data from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/all-aboard-bitcoins-rise-inspires-even-big-banks-staff-george-anders/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LinkedIn</a> demonstrated a 615% increase in job postings containing terms such as ‘blockchain’ or ‘crypto’ last August compared to the previous year.



Amid the backdrop of the great resignation, people have changed how they think about life and work, making competition between the TradFi (traditional finance) and digital asset sectors even more acute. It also means that compensation is not the sole factor.



<a href="https://fortune.com/2022/03/07/jobs-in-crypto-hiring-wall-street-exodus/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According</a> to David Duong — who recently left HSBC to head up institutional research at Coinbase — “It’s actually a career risk if I don’t move into this space.” He discounts compensation as the primary motivation and cites an emphasis on the relevance of what he actually works on as the most important factor.



As money and financial systems continue to evolve, we are witnessing a shift from TradFi to the digital assets space. Talented professionals in financial services want to work on relevant and cutting edge projects. As Michael Bucella of crypto investment firm BlockTower Capital <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/on-wall-street-bonuses-are-up-but-the-mood-is-not-11642696264" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">put it recently</a>, crypto “offers [a] level of excitement that the banks can’t.” Bucella exited Goldman Sachs for BlockTower in 2017.



Crypto market maker GSR is a good example of the Cambrian explosion that’s happening in crypto and manifesting itself in the wealth of opportunities that the company is now offering. GSR is <a href="https://jobs.lever.co/gsr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hiring for 100 open roles</a> in London, New York, Singapore and Zug. Earlier this year John MacDonald, former managing director and chief technology officer at Citadel Securities in Europe, joined GSR as its CTO to drive the firm’s technology strategy.&nbsp;



The talent drain is not exclusive to banking. These roles span a myriad of functions including compliance, finance, legal, risk management, sales, software engineering, DevOps and enterprise technology and security.



GSR’s Michael Bressler late last year gave <a href="https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2021/12/gsr-crypto-jobs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">insight</a> into even greater ambitions for the company, saying, “Our plan is to add 100 hires every six months for the next few years.”



The company’s intentions were certainly borne by its progress in 2021. While GSR started the year with a headcount of 60, the current team is now over 250.



Just like so many others that have made the transition, Bressler is a veteran of traditional finance, having worked for JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs previously. GSR’s global head of sales revealed what the company values most in new crypto hires: “A passion for crypto.”



Hiring is not confined to pure crypto startups either. Many of the companies in TradFi and fintech are also adding staff for newly created crypto units and projects. Having opened a crypto and blockchain business unit in 2021, PayPal has followed up by hiring 100 crypto experts. Payments company Stripe is diving back into crypto following a previous foray into the sector between 2014 and 2018.



Amid what can only be described as a crypto recruiting frenzy, and with crypto and traditional industry leaders announcing blockchain-based products, it’s only a matter of time before the adoption of cryptocurrency becomes a global standard across industries.



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This content is sponsored by <a href="https://www.gsr.io" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GSR</a>.

The Crypto Hiring Boom Key for Mass Adoption

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_621e76fb8de4a" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>“There is no longer any room for doubt regarding the impact crypto assets are having on our global financial system,&#8221; said Farzam Ehsani, VALR CEO and co-founder</li>
 <li>VALR has processed over $7.5 billion in trading volume since its 2019 launch</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



South African crypto exchange VALR raised a $50 million venture capital round in one of the largest fundraises for the continent on record.



The exchange raised $50 million — bringing the company’s valuation to $240 million — in a Series B round led by crypto asset manager Pantera Capital, VALR said Tuesday.



The round was oversubscribed with investors including Alameda Research, Cadenza, CMT Digital, Coinbase Ventures, Distributed Global, GSR, Third Prime and Avon Ventures, which is affiliated with Fidelity Investments. Existing investors Bittrex and 4Di Capital also wrote checks.



The funds will be used to expand across Africa and into other emerging markets like India, as well as bringing new products and services onboard and hiring.&nbsp;



In July 2020, VALR raised $3.4 million in a Series A. Its valuation has grown tenfold since.



“There is no longer any room for doubt regarding the impact crypto assets are having on our global financial system,&#8221; Farzam Ehsani, VALR CEO and co-founder, said in a statement.



VALR users can trade and custody more than 60 cryptocurrencies with relatively low fees. Since its 2019 launch, the startup has processed more than $7.5 billion in trades between 250,000 retail customers and 500 institutional clients.



Crypto has grown in Africa as funds have deployed capital to the continent. From July 2020 to June 2021, crypto adoption in Africa increased 1,200%, according to <a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/africas-grassroots-cryptocurrency-adoption/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chainalysis</a>. Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania are considered regional crypto hubs.



“In addition to being the third-fastest growing cryptocurrency economy, Africa also has a bigger share of its overall transaction volume made up of retail-sized transfers than any other region at just over 7%, versus the global average of 5.5%,” the report says.&nbsp;



Last year, rapper Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey, current CEO of <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/jack-dorseys-square-to-change-its-name-to-block/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Block</a>, formerly known as Square, created <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=africa#:~:text=Jack%20Dorsey%20and%20Jay%2DZ%20Created%20%E2%82%BFtrust%3B%20Here%E2%80%99s%20How%20its%20Board%20Plans%20to%20Deploy%20the%20500%20Bitcoins" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">₿trust</a>, a new endowment of 500 bitcoins for development across Africa and India. Three of the four ₿trust board members are in Nigeria, with one based in South Africa. 



&#8220;The world is on the precipice of huge financial change,” Ehsani said. “Crypto assets will become more and more pivotal to all our lives.”



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In One of Africa’s Largest Crypto Raises, South African Exchange Takes In $50M

<div id="highlights-block_6217c2b4a546f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The capital raised will be used to grow its core products for Ethereum-compatible blockchains like layer-2 networks</li>
 <li>Aligned&#8217;s founder is the former chief strategy officer at ConsenSys</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Aligned, a DeFi and Web3 infrastructure company, has secured $34 million in funding, the company announced on Thursday.



Investors include GSR, Altium Capital and Cavalry Fund, as well as individual investors like film producer Happy Walters. This is the firm&#8217;s first funding round, founder Sam Cassatt told Blockworks.



Cassatt, a former chief strategy officer at ConsenSys, said he formed Aligned to provide products for mining, high performance computing and staking and liquidity provisioning through an immutable, full-stack infrastructure for DeFi (decentralized finance).



“[We’re taking] a deep and thoughtful look at what the next generation infrastructure looks like for Web3,” Cassatt noted. “Web3 will have different architectures than Web2, and for us, we’re not just buying commodity hardware or renting it from AWS, we’re building custom hardware.”



In the past 12 months, demand for DeFi has grown astronomically. The total value locked in DeFi protocols has risen 237% from $55.36 billion to $186.55 billion year-over-year, <a href="https://defillama.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a> from DeFi Llama shows. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“Demand will continue to grow,” Cassatt said. “I don’t see this slowing down, it’s getting larger day by day.”&nbsp;</blockquote>



The capital raised will be used to grow its core products for Ethereum-compatible blockchains like layer-2 networks.



“My background is very devoted to Ethereum, and we help get it to market,” Cassatt said to Blockworks. “However, we would be remiss to only focus on the Ethereum network.”



Overall, liquidity needs to be deployed across many new architectures and frameworks, and Cassatt said the company works as much as possible to be agnostic to tokens and networks themselves.



Going forward, the firm plans to continue growing Web3 architecture to create more opportunities for crypto companies building in the space, Cassatt said.



“Our hope is that we can help secure networks and help companies get off the ground faster because we have infrastructure they can use.”



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