Finery Markets raises $5.5m to expand multilateral institutional marketplace for OTC crypto

Finery Markets has raised $5.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by G1 Ventures, gumi Cryptos and Shima Capital.

Investors included Communitas Capital, DV Chain, GravityX, Unlimint, Daedalus Angels, oneAlpha, and Floating Point Group, among other industry leaders.

This was the first time the company received outside funding in order to further develop and expand its multi-dealer electronic marketplace for institutional participants and trading solutions provider for crypto markets.

“A foundational building block for maturing market infrastructure”

Konstantin Shulga, co-founder and CEO of Finery Markets said: “Running the first multilateral institutional marketplace in the crypto space, we aim to establish best practices across trading, risk management and operational standards for crypto. We see our role as a foundational building block for maturing market infrastructure, which makes markets more efficient and sustainable. As a marketplace, we focused on bringing in a diverse mix of leading investors that represent web3 funds, strategic partners and traditional venture capital firms, led by veterans of the electronic trading business.

“I believe in digital assets becoming a leading asset class globally. Market structure should meet evolving requirements. Our mission is to bridge the gaps in transparency and technological solutions by bringing institutional-grade pre-trade, trade and post-trade infrastructure to a broad range of market participants. We help them to automate operations throughout the whole trade life cycle and increase profitability of their businesses.”

Rui Zhang, Co-founder and Managing Partner of gumi Cryptos Capital said: “As we observed in the TradFi world, a majority of the transactions are actually completed via OTC market, rather than exchanges. We believe it will be the same for the crypto market. As a multi-dealer execution venue, Finery is able to provide a much more efficient trading operation, lower execution cost, and safer clearing control for institutional users. We are thrilled to support Finery’s vision.”

Arseny Klekovkin, Managing Partner of G1 Ventures added: “We have been tracking development of Finery shortly after its inception and can only commend the agility and evolution of the team, as well as impressive validation of institutionally focused and regulatory compliant business model. The team has placed P2P and marketplace philosophy at the core of Finery early on and currently it is becoming more than ever relevant for any corporate user of digital assets. Recent events and failures of centralized onramps and trading venues underscore the fundamental advantages of Finery and will support its further growth even in the face of challenging markets. Looking forward to working together with Ilya and Konstantin to enable further success of Finery.”

Yida Gao, Managing General Partner of Shima Capital said: “We’ve had the pleasure to learn about the Finery Markets platform over the last year as several of Shima’s existing portfolio companies and partners already use the system. We were thoroughly impressed by not only the tier 1 trade execution platform but also the high integrity and focus of Finery’s team that exemplifies the type of management we love to back in bear markets. Given the recent market volatility and implosions in our space, institutions will trust centralized exchanges less and this gives Finery-a non-custodial model that does not require institutions to trust any third party with their coins-a sustainable edge.”

Finery Markets offers pre-trade and post-trade functionality for crypto trading

Finery Markets was founded in 2019 and already caters to more than 70 business that rely on the startup to work with digital assets internationally and get access to deep liquidity pools offered by leading global liquidity providers.

The pre-trade and post-trade functionalities of the platform allow clients to benefit from price intelligence, full trade transparency, settlement flexibility, market and counterparty risks control, and reporting tools.

Finery Markets has grown its diversified client base – that includes payment services processors, institutional sell-side, and retail platforms – with lean budget, and has enjoyed 12x YoY revenue growth last year. For 2022, the firm expects further growth despite the harsh ‘crypto winter’ that slowed institutional adoption.

FinanceFeeds spoke with chief executive Konstantin Shulga earlier this year about a PwC study commissioned by Finery Markets that found that an OTC desk solution is more effective than going through centralized exchanges (CEX), namely for execution and liquidity quality. The interview can be found here.