Decentralised exchange Brine Fi on Friday said it has secured $16.5 million (around Rs 137 crore) in a Series A funding exercise led by US-based investment firm Pantera Capital, taking the company’s valuation to $100 million.
The round also saw participation from Elevation Capital, Starkware Ltd, Spartan Group, Goodwater Capital, Upsparks Capital, Protofund Ventures and a clutch of angel investors.
UAE and Bengaluru-based Brine Fi is a decentralised exchange for institutions and high frequency traders.
The company makes use of zkP (zero knowledge proofs) technology, powered by StarkWare, which enables privacy on trading positions, so that traders can get their high volume orders executed with ease. Moreover, users can trade gasless and pay a trading fee as small as 0.05%, it said in a statement.
“…with Brine Fi we make it easy for institutions, centralised exchanges, HFT traders and retail users to reduce their counterparty risk and at the same time get the best price for their orders in the industry,” said Shaaran Lakshminarayanan, co-founder and chief executive at Brine Fi.
“Brine tackles some of the most important challenges holding back institutional and mainstream user adoption in DeFi,” said Paul Veradittakit, managing partner at Pantera Capital.
In January, a report by CoinGecko said that investments in cryptocurrency companies fell 42.5% to $21.26 billion year-on-year, amid bearish market conditionsHowever, the cumulative fund raised was still higher than the total funding raised each year from 2018 to 2020.