Cryptocurrency companies ended the week with around $62 million in venture capital (VC) raised from various companies, including BlackRock.
Securitize receives $47 million
Securitize, a leading digital asset securities company, has withdrawn most of the funds raised over the past few days.
The company closed a major funding round on May 1, raising $47 million. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, led these efforts.
As part of the fundraising agreement, Joseph Shalom, Global Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock, has joined Securitize's Board of Directors.
The funding coincided with the launch of BlackRock's first token fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which was deployed on Ethereum (ETH).
BUIDL, which is jointly managed with Securitize, aims to maintain a fixed token value of $1, deliver 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 has secured $5 million in seed funding.
Haun Ventures – the backer of Chainalogy, Argus Labs and Sona – was the lead investment firm. Notable contributions have also come from Seed Club, Coinbase Ventures, and several industry heavyweights such as Coin Center co-founder Balaji Srinivasan, podcast host and investor Sina Habibian, and Ethereum developer Tim Beiko.
Agora offers a comprehensive governance system for decentralized communities, providing core tools such as gasless voting, proposal sponsorship, and API integration, with notable clients including Optimism (OP) and Uniswap (UNI).
Musso gets $2 million
Moso, a Los Angeles-based for-profit shopping platform that blends cryptocurrency with online shopping, closed a $2 million seed funding round in late April.
Token backers include Capitalic Capital and Dao5.
In a blog mailMusso indicated that it aims to use the funds from the seed round to support its operations and development initiatives.
Led by CEO Blake Capoza, Moso partners with more than 2,000 merchants, such as Walmart and eBay, to facilitate cryptocurrency rewards for users.
X10 gets $6.5 million
Elsewhere, former Revolut employees launched X10, a hybrid cryptocurrency exchange, securing $6.5 million in funding.
Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures and prominent individuals from Revolut and Lido, including Lido founder Konstantin Lomashuk, are among the backers. X10 promotes a hybrid approach to crypto custody, which operates at the intersection of centralized and decentralized systems.
Hinkal gets $1.4 million
Finally, Hinkal, a San Francisco-based multi-chain privacy layer for confidential decentralized finance (defi) transactions, raised $1.4 million led by the SALT Fund.
Founded by György and Nika Corelli, Hinkal aims to address the liquidity challenges of venture capital and founding teams by providing a safe environment for token entitlement and liquidation without negative market impacts.
The platform is powered by zero-knowledge (ZK) technology and provides a private smart contract wallet experience, allowing users to interact with decentralized applications (dapps) directly from private addresses.