Crypto firm Fireblocks raises $550 mln, company valued at $8 bln

By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Fireblocks, a digital asset infrastructure provider, said on Thursday it raised $550 million from institutional investors, making it one of the largest financing rounds in the cryptocurrency sector in the last few years.

The latest investment valued the company at $8 billion.

The funding was led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital, with participation from investors such as General Atlantic, Altimeter, Index Ventures and CapitalG, Alphabet's growth fund, Fireblocks said in a statement.

All firms confirmed their investment in emails to Reuters.

"We're going to use the capital for further investment into new use cases in the digital asset space such as decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, gaming, entertainment, and music," Michael Shaulov, Fireblocks chief executive officer told Reuters in a phone interview.

Decentralized finance refers to that segment of the market which facilitates crypto-denominated financial transactions outside of traditional banks.

Non-fungible tokens, on the other hand, are unique digital assets that cannot be replaced.

Fireblocks works with companies and financial institution that want to build cryptocurrencies and digital assets, providing the infrastructure - including wallets - to make the digital assets safe and secure.

Shaulov said his company's goal is to make every business a crypto enterprise.

U.S.-based Fireblocks cited a recent Gartner report which showed about one-fifth of major organizations will utilize digital currencies by 2024, suggesting the adoption of crypto by large corporations will accelerate in 2022 and beyond.

Shaulov said Fireblocks has a network which connects its members to the digital currency capital markets and enables instant settlements of payments and fund transfers.

He said Fireblocks aims to facilitate fund transfers in "a secure way because a lot of the hacks are not happening when you're storing it, but when you're moving or selling it."

An estimated 15% of daily crypto transaction volume as been secured through Fireblock's infrastructure, according to Dan Sundheim, founder of New York-based D1, one of the lead investors in the latest funding round. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)