For institutions, the process of sending cryptocurrencies is about to get a whole lot safer.
Fireblocks, which today comes out of stealth mode, is a platform for keeping cryptocurrencies secure when they’re moved among exchanges, over-the-counter trading desks, brokerages, and in-house transactions between exchanges’ own wallets.
The New York-based startup has received $16 million in Series A funding from institutions including Fidelity investments (via its venture arm, EightRoads), Cyberstarts, Tenaya Capital, Swisscom Ventures and MState.
The secure sending platform is already being used by merchant bank Galaxy Digital and over-the-counter trading platform Genesis Global and more than a dozen crypto exchanges.
“While Blockchain-based assets by themselves are cryptographically secure, moving digital assets is a nightmare,” said Michael Shaulov, CEO at Fireblocks. “After interviewing over 100 institutional customers, including hedge funds, broker-dealers, exchanges, and banks, we concluded that the current process is slow and highly susceptible to cyber attacks and human errors.”
The Fireblocks platform is designed to enable businesses storing large amounts of cryptocurrency to securely make transactions, whether that be from their on-hand storage (hot wallets) or long term storage (cold wallets). This is important because, while cryptocurrency transactions themselves are secure, funds can be lost through hacks, malware or human error. The service could be used to increase the security of funds held on exchanges and other platforms.
And boy—does crypto need a bit of that.