SheeldMarket aims to attract institutional players from Europe while giving them exposure to several crypto derivative products and DeFi protocols.
France-based crypto prime broker SheeldMarket recently secured $10 million in funding during the Series A funding round. The broker seeks to become a go-to-market for institutional players to buy and sell crypto assets in a regulated environment.
Atomico, a London-based venture capital firm led the funding round along with participation from Semantic Ventures. As part of the deal, Atomico partner Siraj Khaliq will be joining SheeldMarket’s board of directors. Besides, some Angel investors also participated in the funding including Pascal Gauthier (CEO of Ledger) and Alexis Bonillo (co-founder of Zenly).
SheeldMarket amid New Funding Round
SheeldMarket also believes that the institutional appetite for crypto EU is largely untapped. While most of the new FinTech startups target institutional players in US and Asia, SheelMarket is exploring the European market.
Thus, by complying with local European regulations, SheeldMarket is confident of attracting institutional players from the region. Institutional players find it a bit complex for stepping into the crypto space. This is because they have to deal with several products like exchanges, custodians, OTC providers, etc.
SheeldMarket aims to make this entire process easy. Customers can deposit their funds directly with SheeldMarket. Later, the exchange will let users process market orders via OTC platforms and multiple crypto exchanges. SheeldMarket will automatically route the orders to the platforms offering the best exchange rates and liquidity. In a statement to TechCrunch, Wave Financial’s Benjamin Tsai said:
“We appreciate SheeldMarket’s advanced platform because it allows us to execute very large trades across multiple global crypto exchanges, in a regulated way, using advanced algorithms. This has been a gamechanger for us when it comes to saving time, manpower and trading costs compared to trying to execute the same volume of trades manually”.
Integrating with DeFi Protocols
Citing good market opportunities in decentralized finance (DeFi), SheeldMarket is also willing to integrate several DeFi protocols. Thus, it can also unlock high-yield opportunities for institutional players.
SheeldMarket will offer customers access to derivatives trading along with permissioned DeFi protocols such as Aave Arc. Speaking to The Block, SheeldMarket CEO Oliver Yates said:
“Since we are a broker under regulatory supervision, we cannot trade directly with non-permission DeFi protocols as there is no KYC”.
Some of the existing clients of SheeldMarket are blockchain and DeFi foundations, crypto hedge funds, etc. With the current fundraising, the French crypto startup is looking to double its team size.