Fireblocks becomes the next crypto unicorn at $310М
New York-based Fireblocks has become the next crypto unicorn after a massive investment round led by BlockFi, Paxos, OpenSea, Chainalysis, and ConsesSys. The company, co-founded by CEO Michael Shaulov, Pavel Berengoltz, and Idan Ofrat, has now raised $310 million in Series D.
Renowned investors such as Sequoia Capital, Stripes, Spark Capital, Coatue, DRW VC, SCB 10X, and BNY Mellon have also come on board with the crypto project. The latter two, a bank from Thailand and Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, are prime supporters of crypto assets in traditional finance.
Companies can use the Fireblockers tech infrastructure to provide their customers with crypto wallets, security, tokenization services, etc. Payments, NFTs, and tokenized securities are also supported. Some of Fireblocks’ customers include Revolut, BlockFi, Celsius, PrimeTrust, Galaxy Digital, Crypto.com, and eToro, as the list continues growing.
Roots in the security business
According to Fireblocks, crypto assets worth more than a trillion dollars have migrated through its technical infrastructure in the past 24 months. This shows how essential the software has been to companies that wish to offer their customers a wide variety of crypto services.
Fireblocks itself has its roots in the well-known Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point. The three founders worked there in 2017 when the infamous Lazarus group hacked four South Korean crypto exchanges and stole crypto assets worth $ 200 million in the process. The security experts took this as an opportunity to set up Fireblocks as a service provider in the crypto sector.
At the core of Fireblocks are so-called SGX and MPC technologies – abbreviations for “Software Guard Extensions” and “Multiparty Computation” and are intended to underline the expert status in matters of cybersecurity.
