Crypto infrastructure startup Qredo closes $80 million raise

Crypto infrastructure developer Qredo has secured an $80 million Series A investment that values it at $460 million.

The round consists of $60 million in primary capital and $20 million from secondary investors, according to an announcement. The money will be used to fuel growth through acquisitions, product development and geographic expansion. 

Hedge fund veteran Dan Tapiero’s 10T Holdings led the raise, alongside strategic investors Coinbase Ventures, Avalanche and Terra. Kingsway Capital, HOF Capital, Raptor Group and GoldenTree Asset Management also participated. 

Qredo builds decentralized tools that help DeFi operators move assets between blockchains, as well as with settlement and custody.

The company’s COO, Josh Goodbody, said there is currently “huge appetite” among venture capital investors for crypto infrastructure firms. Tapiero, founder and CEO of 10T Holdings, said in a statement that “infrastructure is a key battleground for scaling crypto adoption.”

Earlier this week, crypto data startup Dune Analytics confirmed that it had raised $69 million at a $1 billion valuation. Custody specialist Fireblocks has just closed a $550 million raise at a valuation of $8 billion, while Ethereum software developer ConsenSys is set to close a deal that will more than double its price tag to $7 billion.

“Infrastructure is extremely hot right now,” continued Goodbody. “What you have also seen in the background is really a race for multi-party computation (MPC) technology.”

The network is the vault

Qredo’s core premise is that it offers “decentralized custody for decentralized assets,” according to its website. 

The company uses MPC to split and scatter customers’ private keys but claims to take the concept further than the first wave of crypto security firms — like Fireblocks and Copper — by distributing these fragments across watertight data centers, with control in the hands of the Qredochain, the firm’s Layer 2 network.

The key difference, according to Goodbody, is that Qredo itself doesn’t hold those fragments.

“Each custodial operation — each transaction, each signature, and each change to wallet custodial policies — is mined into the blockchain,” states Qredo on its website. “In this way, the network becomes the vault.”

The firm’s infrastructure also supports instant cross-chain swaps and settlement on supported blockchains. 

Growth mode

Qredo’s customers include major crypto platforms and trading firms such as Coinbase, Celsius, Deribit and GSR. As of December last year, the firm boasted more than $6 billion in assets on the network, according to Goodbody.

The startup raised $11 million in seed funding in early 2021, before staging a $35 million token sale in July. Goodbody, who previously led Binance’s operations in Europe and joined Qredo in June 2021, said the firm has grown significantly since the token sale.

“We’re now 100 people globally. We’ve embraced this remote-first workforce,” he added.

Qredo’s client roster has also been growing. In October last year, the firm partnered with Ethereum wallet firm MetaMask Institutional to help institutions access DeFi ecosystems.

“We now have over 100 of what we call institutional clients. Of those, half the clients are interested in DeFi,” said Goodbody.

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