Leading the investment are Paradigm and Pantera Capital, with Polychain Capital, Blockchain.com, Coinbase Ventures and Fenbushi Capital also participating. Existing investor Dragonfly Capital was also on board.
Amber Group, a Hong Kong-based startup offering a range of cryptocurrency finance services, has raised $28 million in a Series A funding round.
Amber said Friday the investment funds will be used to expand its operations to meet client demand and add new features to its platform.
“While the industry has come a long way, there is still plenty of work to do in order to meet the growing demands of clients in a fragmented market.” said Michael Wu, Amber Group CEO. “We’re thrilled to partner with some of the world’s leading investors and crypto companies to accelerate our mission of strengthening the crypto finance ecosystem.»
The firm offers clients services including crypto-based electronic market making, automated over-the-counter trading and collateralized lending. It’s clients include exchanges, mining companies and pools, wallets and hedge funds, according to its announcement.
“Our most successful investments have been when we’ve found companies doing something better than we can ourselves,» said Dan Morehead, founder and CEO of Pantera Capital. «Amber dramatically improved our electronic execution across a wide spectrum of assets.»
Crypto Finance Firm Circle Puts Research Offering on Hold
Cryptocurrency finance startup Circle has stopped its line of research reports saying it needs to reconsider the offering.
In a post on its website on Tuesday, Circle reached out to consumers of the service, saying:
“While we’ve made significant progress with our content offerings, it’s time to evaluate our contribution and overall strategy. With that in mind, we’ve decided to pause Circle Research activity for the time being as we decide on a future direction for the program.”
Circle Research had provided weekly and quarterly overviews of the crypto space, looking at markets, blockchain news and industry news.
The move may be a continuation of apparent cost-cutting moves by the firm which offers cryptocurrency payments via an app, OTC trading and spot trading via its Poloniex exchange platform (acquired in February of last year). It’s also part of a consortium including Coinbase that has launched a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar called USD Coin (USDC).
Three months ago, Circle said it would wind down the Circle Pay app, with a closing date for the service of Sept. 30. At the time the firm’s CEO, Jeremy Allaire said it makes sense to focus more on USDC and “wallet services that take a bigger step toward reaching our original vision for a free, open and transparent global payments network.”
And in May, 30 staff were let go – roughly 10 percent of its employees – with Circle citing market conditions and “an increasingly restrictive regulatory climate in the United States”, as the reason.
