Crypto Custody Firm Fire Blocks Gets a Nice Chunk of Money

Fire Blocks – a crypto custodial service based in New York City – has garnered roughly $133 million in funding from the likes of both Silicon Valley Bank and BNY Mellon.

Fire Blocks Gets $133 Million from BNY Mellon

The funds came by way of a Series C venture capital funding round led by Coatue, Ribbit and Stripes. Overall, the company has gotten its fingers on approximately $179 million in new funds over the past several months. Firms to have previously invested in Fire Blocks include Paradigm, Galaxy Digital and Swisscom Ventures.

This new round is not only important, but highly suggestive in that the funds came by way of BNY Mellon. Recently, the financial institution made serious headway in the crypto space when it announced it was going to be offering crypto custody services to its clients. Now that it’s making such a huge investment in a company that offers the exact same thing, it has become clear that the bank is working towards a world in which standard and new finance measures become one and the same.

CEO and co-founder of Fire Blocks Michael Shaulov explained what the money would be used for:

Engineering is going to be a major part of our spend… We are engaged with the most senior leaders across capital markets and they’re leading the charge… There is still a significant amount of education that needs to be built into a lot of those relationships.

In just the past few months alone, the firm has garnered at least 70 new clients, though it is estimated that as many as 80 additional ones will be added to the company’s roster by the end of the first quarter in 2021. In addition, the company has overseen as much as $400 billion in digital asset transfers since the day it first arrived on the financial scene.

The Company Just Keeps Getting Bigger

Right now, it is estimated that the company has more than 230 clients, many of which are banks, fintech firms, hedge funds, exchanges and other largescale financial businesses. A spokesperson for BNY Mellon spoke highly of the startup and mentioned in a recent interview:

We are proud to be a part of the larger movement to bring digital assets mainstream. This strategic investment is the logical next step in our journey to being an asset services for all asset classes.

Fire Blocks was founded in the year 2018 by members of Check Point, a cybersecurity company that was initially tasked with investigating the activities of Lazarus, a crypto hacking group stationed in North Korea. Because of the recent price surge experienced by bitcoin, the company has grown massively over the past few months, having transferred just over $100 billion worth of crypto at press time. This is a huge difference over the $6 billion in crypto posted just over a year ago.

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