28.03.2024

Fidelity Affiliate Joins $3.5 Million Blockchain Firm Funding Round

As Fortune reported on Sept. 23, Elementus, which launched its offering in 2017, also gained capital from Stage 1 Ventures and Robot Ventures.

Blockchain analytics firm Elementus has raised $3.5 million from backers including a sister company of crypto-friendly asset manager Fidelity Investments.

Morgan Creek Digital, the crypto-focused asset manager co-founded by well-known commentator Anthony Pompliano, led the round.

Morgan Creek Digital leads fresh cash injection

The tie to Fidelity came in the form of Avon Ventures, a subsidiary of the private equity arm of Fidelity’s parent company, FMR.

Blockchain-not-Bitcoin investments decline

According to Crunchbase, the $3.5 million is only the second for Elementus, having secured $800,000 in a seed round in April 2018.

The company provides insights into the cryptocurrency sphere, one recent expose in August highlighting exchanges’ handling of illicit proceeds from alleged Ponzi scheme PlusToken.

Executives have yet to provide public confirmation of the funding.

As Cointelegraph reported, investments focusing on blockchain rather than Bitcoin have tailed off this year. Research from CB Insights in July showed a 60% decline, as an analyst from the company warned early enthusiasm around blockchain tech was beginning to wane.

Fidelity Leads $13M Funding Round for Israeli Blockchain Startup Clear

Israeli blockchain startup Clear has raised $13 million in a Series A round led by Fidelity-backed Eight Roads.

Clear – which develops blockchain networks for high-volume transaction systems between businesses – announced the round’s completion in a statement via TechCrunch on Feb. 5.

Eight Roads is a global venture firm that originates in Fidelity’s first investment business, Fidelity Ventures.

Other participants in the Series A for Clear were the venture funds of several global telecoms leaders: Spain’s Telefónica Innovation Ventures, the Telekom Innovation Pool of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, Hong Kong telco HKT and Singapore’s Singtel Innov8.

Telecoms is Clear’s first sectoral focus in its development of a blockchain and smart contract-driven transaction network designed for cross-border business to business (B2B) payments.

Co-founder Gal Hochberg said that smart contracts in particular are a powerful tool to deal with high-volume, international transactions, as they:

“Create a trusted view of the true status of the relationship within the company’s business partners … they can find any issues in real time, either in commercial information or in service delivery, and they can even actually resolve those inside our platform.”

Use of the blockchain ensures that all these B2B transactions are auditable and secured by cryptography, with data consistent and in-sync for all parties involved.

Hochberg has claimed that the network is ostensibly capable of processing “hundreds of millions of billable events”, based on internal testing.

Clear anticipates entering full carrier-grade production in H1 2020, with the aim of expanding beyond telcos with the help of yesterday’s Series A.

Blockchain gains traction in global telecoms

Last month, Telefónica partnered with the local Association of Science and Technology Parks to grant access to its Hyperledger-based blockchain to about 8,000 firms in Spain.

In September 2019, Union Mobile, South Korea’s fourth-largest mobile carrier, announced the launch of its blockchain project ELYNET.

Within the blockchain development space, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance published an overview of use cases for blockchain in telecommunications in August 201

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