Money pouring into digital assets space doesn’t seem to be letting up
“The growth of the institutional market for digital assets in East Asia is just at its inception,” the Hyperithm co-founders said

Two digital asset-based companies, MobileCoin and Hyperithm, have announced new fundraising of $66 million and $11 million, respectively, marking another day of strength for investment in the growing crypto sector.

In general, the digital asset space has seen a huge influx of investors and as of mid-June crypto funding hit an all-time high of $17 billion invested for 2021, Blockworks previously reported. Lots of institutional investors are showing interest and venture funding is a way for these players to get involved, sources said. While enormous amounts of fundraising is being poured into the space every week, the interest doesn’t seem to be letting up.

Some of the areas seeing the most venture capital interest are the DeFi and NFT spaces, Alex Thorn, head of firmwaide research at Galaxy Digital, previously told Blockworks in an interview. But overall, the crypto environment for investors is becoming more competitive, Thorn said, which points to the difference between median valuations in digital asset projects versus the broader venture capital market.

MobileCoin moves to improve products

Digital payment company MobileCoin closed its $66 million Series B round on Wednesday, which will be used to help the company improve its products, it said. To date, the company has raised $107 million.

Investors include Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research, Berggruen Holdings, BlockTower Capital, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and Vy Capital.

The company is in the process of rolling out its initial stablecoin, which will hold value in line with the US dollar, it said. In April, Signal, a private messaging app, launched a beta payment feature with MobileCoin’s MOB token, which allows users to access it within its app. The company also has established products like MOBot, a cryptocurrency chatbot payment system.

MobileCoin is available on exchanges like FTX, Bitfinex, BigOne, and HotBit for non-US users. The company said its transactions are “one of the fastest in the world, completing in just seconds,” which gives senders and receivers more ability to minimize risk. “The technology was built for mobility and convenience, with payments occurring right on your phone,” it added.

Hyperithm invests funding in automated trading

Separately, the Tokyo-based Hyperithm, a private digital asset manager, raised $11 million in a Series B round co-led by Hashed and Wemade Tree.

Other participants included Coinbase Ventures, Cocone, GS Futures, and Guardian Fund. Although no exact number was shared, the latest round increased its valuation ten times compared to its previous Series A funding round from 2019, the company said. The last round was led by VIP Research & Management, an asset manager with $20 billion in assets under management.

The company was co-founded in 2018, by an ex-Morgan Stanley investment banker Sangrok Oh and entrepreneur Lloyd Lee and operates in Tokyo and Seoul. It specializes in automating trading and risk management through algorithms in the programming language Rust. Today, Hyperithm mainly has investors based in Asia, specifically Japan, Korea and Singapore, but also has participants from the US, it said.

“The growth of the institutional market for digital assets in East Asia is just at its inception,” Lee and Oh said in a statement. “While facilitating the soft landing of digital assets into the mainstream capital markets, we will continue our journey to become a global financial institution.”

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