(ASEAN Startups) Sygnum, a digital asset technology group with a Swiss banking license and a Singapore asset management licence, said Thursday it has raised $90 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Sun Hung Kai & Co. Limited.
They are joined by a raft of new and existing strategic investors, with the round valuing Sygnum at $800 million on a post-money basis, Sygnum said in a statement.
As with all prior fundraising rounds, Series B also saw the participation of a large group of employees as personal investors. These team members have now joined the co-founders, board members, and management team as shareholders of the firm, and this group continues to hold majority ownership of the company.
According to the statement, the proceeds will accelerate Sygnum’s development of new institutional-grade Web 3.0 offerings, including additional yield-generating products, including white-listed decentralized finance (DeFi) pools and expanded staking services; asset management solutions providing trusted access to new, high-growth DeFi innovations; new commercial partnerships with leading blockchain ecosystems like the Dfinity Foundation.
The funding will also propel Sygnum’s market-tested offerings into new global markets, expand its Singapore hub’s operations and provide opportunities to co-create and distribute innovative products internationally with its strategic investors.
“This financing round is a key milestone in our global expansion and in our mission to empower everyone everywhere to own digital assets with complete trust,” he said.
Sygnum Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Singapore Gerald Goh also said savvy digital asset investors are increasingly looking for novel opportunities in the frontiers of Web 3.0, including DeFi, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), play-to-earn gaming, and the metaverse.
“We look forward to partnering with our strong global network of strategic investors to expand our suite of fully-regulated digital asset offerings and solutions into these emerging verticals,”
Meanwhile, Sun Hung Kai & Co. Ltd Group Executive Chairman Lee Seng Huang said the fund has a strategic vision to expand its fund management offerings into digital assets.
“Amidst growing institutional demand and regulatory oversight of this sector, Sygnum, with its track record as a fully-regulated digital asset bank and asset manager, is the ideal partner for us to co-develop digital asset focused products together and to cater to the strong demand for digital asset solutions and services in Asia, Europe and beyond,” he said.
Fuelled by continued strong demand for its integrated portfolio of regulated digital asset products and services, Sygnum delivered a tenfold year-on-year increase in consolidated gross revenues in 2021. In the same period, its client base neared 1,000 financial institutions, banks, corporates, and private investors, and its assets under administration grew to well over $2 billion.
Sygnum claimed itself as the world’s first digital asset bank, and a digital asset specialist with a global reach. With Sygnum Bank AG’s Swiss banking licence, as well as Sygnum Pte Ltd’s capital markets services (CMS) licence in Singapore, Sygnum empowers institutional and private qualified investors, corporates, banks, and other financial institutions to invest in the digital asset economy with complete trust.
Sygnum operates an independently controlled, scalable, and future-proof regulated banking platform. Its interdisciplinary team of banking, investment, and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) experts is shaping the development of a trusted digital asset ecosystem. The company is founded on Swiss and Singapore heritage and operates globally.
Sygnum provides a fully-regulated suite of integrated digital asset financial products and services, including bank-grade digital asset custody and fiat rails, spot and options trading, cryptocurrency-backed fiat loans, innovative digital asset-focused asset management products, asset tokenization solutions, and business to business (B2B) banking for regulated financial institutions.
In addition to regulated 24/7 trading for Bitcoin, (BTC) Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), and other leading cryptocurrencies, Sygnum also offers access to a range of leading DeFi tokens including Uniswap (UNI), Chainlink (LINK), Polygon (MATIC), Aave (AAVE), Maker (MKR), Compound (COMP), Curve (CRV), Synthetix (SNX) and 1Inch (1inch). Sygnum’s DeFi offering will be expanded throughout 2022.
On December 9, 2021, Sygnum also launched a DeFi investment strategy with its new structured product solution.
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