VC roundup: Securitize, Agora, Moso, Hinkal, X10 clinch new funds

Cryptocurrency companies closed the week with nearly $62 million in venture capital (VC) raised from various firms, including BlackRock.

Securitize receives $47 million

Securitize, a leading player in digital asset securities, walked away with the bulk of the funds raised over the past few days.

The company closed a significant funding round on May 1, raising $47 million. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, led the effort.

Securitize is excited to announce that we have completed a $47 million funding round led by @BlackRock together with @hamilton_lane, @paraficapital, @Tradeweb, and strategic investors @AptosLabs, @circle and @Paxos.

This further proves that the demand for tokenized real-world… pic.twitter.com/sRuNgEslVj

— Securitize (@Securitize) May 1, 2024

As part of the fundraising agreement, Joseph Chalom, BlackRock’s Global Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships, joined the Securitize board of directors.

The funding coincided with the launch of BlackRock’s first tokenized fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which was deployed on Ethereum (ETH).

Managed jointly with Securitize, BUIDL is intended to maintain a stable token value of $1, provide dividends directly to investors’ wallets, and offer flexible custody options in order to enhance investor accessibility and convenience.

Agora raises $5 million

Cross-chain governance platform Agora secured $5 million in seed funding.

Haun Ventures — backer of Chainalysis, Argus Labs and Sona — was the lead investment firm. Notable contributions also came from Seed Club, Coinbase Ventures, and various industry heavyweights such as Coin Center co-founder Balaji Srinivasan, podcast host and investor Sina Habibian, and Ethereum developer Tim Beiko.

Agora offers an end-to-end governance system for decentralized communities, furnishing essential tools such as gasless voting, proposal sponsorship, and API integration, with notable clients including Optimism (OP) and Uniswap (UNI).

👋 Introducing Agora – the end-to-end governance app for crypto protocols.

We’ve spent the last 18 months building deeply with top protocols like @Optimism, @UniswapFND, @ENS_DAO…

And starting today, you can get all of the same tools for your community through our new site! pic.twitter.com/bvxOB8pXPF

— Agora (@AgoraGovernance) May 1, 2024

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Moso bags $2 million

Moso, a Los Angeles-based shop-to-earn platform that blends crypto with online shopping, successfully closed a $2 million seed funding round in late April.

Symbolic Capital and Dao5 are among the backers.

We are excited to announce the closing of our Seed Round having raised $2M!

Big thank you to our investors and early community for making this possible and believing in our vision. pic.twitter.com/oUjA3l1ewV

— Moso (@MosoHQ) April 24, 2024

In a blog post, Moso indicated that it aims to use the funds from the seed round to bolster its operations and development initiatives.

Led by CEO Blake Capozza, Moso partners with over 2,000 merchants, like Walmart and eBay, to facilitate crypto rewards for users.

X10 gets $6.5 million

Elsewhere, former Revolut employees have launched X10, a hybrid crypto exchange, and secured $6.5 million in funding.

Hybrid crypto exchange X10 launched out of stealth today on testnet with $6.5 million in funding. Led by former Head of Crypto Ops at Revolut Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, the new platform aims to combine the best of CeFi and DeFi.

— Clagett (@Clagett) April 30, 2024

Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures, and notable individuals from Revolut and Lido, including Lido founder Konstantin Lomashuk, are among the backers. X10 promotes a hybrid approach to crypto custody, operating at the intersection of centralized and decentralized systems.

Hinkal secures $1.4 million

Lastly, Hinkal, a San Francisco-based multi-chain privacy layer for confidential decentralized finance (defi) transactions, raised $1.4 million led by the SALT Fund.

We’re excited to share that Hinkal has raised $1.4M at a $70M valuation, led by SALT Fund!

A big thank you to our investors and @TheBlock__ for featuring our story.

Together, we’re re-anonymizing the blockchain.

Read more about our journey: https://t.co/ohMYT5jbE9 https://t.co/6sEs8TbmnY

— Hinkal (@hinkal_protocol) April 26, 2024

Founded by Giorgi and Nika Koreli, Hinkal intends to address liquidity challenges for venture capital and founding teams by providing a secure environment for token vesting and liquidation without adverse market impacts.

The platform is powered by zero knowledge (ZK) technology and offers a private smart contract wallet experience, enabling users to interact with decentralized applications (dapps) directly from private addresses.

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