Crypto prime broker SheeldMarket raises $10 million in Series A funding

The France-based licensed prime broker SheeldMarket has raised $10 million following a Series A funding round.

Viva La France! ?? Today we’re thrilled to announce our Series A partnership with Oliver, Jacques, Arnaud, Simon & the team at Paris-based @SheeldMarket. SheeldMarket provides institutional investors with access to the digital assets marketplace https://t.co/qPiXVhg79p

— Atomico (@atomico) October 12, 2021

The round was led by British venture firms Atomico and Semantic Ventures. It also drew participation from a number of angel investors, including Ledger’s CEO Pascal Gauthier and Alexis Bonilla, co-founder of the location-tracking service Zenly.

Under the terms of the deal, Atomico partner Siraj Halik joined the board of directors of SheeldMarket.

The funds raised will be used to develop derivative financial instruments and to grow DeFi services targeted at institutional clients, modeled on Aave Arc.

“As we are a broker regulated by authorities, we cannot interact directly with open DeFi protocols, as there is no KYC,” said SheeldMarket CEO Oliver Yates in an interview with The Block.

SheeldMarket is regulated by the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF). The platform currently offers institutional investors access to spot cryptocurrency trading. The company’s clients include hedge funds, blockchain- and DeFi- and fintech-firms.

Last year the startup raised $1 million in seed funding from Draper Dragon and Axeleo Capital.

As noted in recent weeks, there have been inflows of institutional capital into digital asset funds.

In August Bloomberg analysts suggested that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would approve an application to launch a Bitcoin ETF by the end of October.

Follow ForkLog news on Facebook!