Institutional Crypto Wallet Provider Utila Raises $11.5M, Aims to Facilitate Tokenization Boom
Utila's self-custodial wallet offers a simplified user interface, fast onboarding process and recently added enhanced tokenization capabilities to better serve token issuers, co-founder and CEO Bentzi Rabi said in an interview.
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- Institutional-grade crypto wallet provider raised $11.5 million from NFX, Wing Venture Capital, Framework Ventures and others.
- Institutional participation in the crypto economy is increasing via trading and tokenization, but security issues are still rampant.
Utila, an Israel-based institutional-grade crypto wallet provider, raised a $11.5 million seed round led by NFX, Wing Venture Capital and Framework Ventures, the company said on Tuesday.
Other participants include Fasanara Digital Ventures, North Island Ventures, Republic Capital, Liquid2, Inspired Capital, Lyrik Ventures, DCG Expeditions, Launchpad Capital, Shima Capita, K5 Global, Big Brain Holdings and Impatient, together with angel investors such as Balaji Srinivasan, according to a press release.
The fundraising happened amid a rejuvenated crypto market, with bitcoin (BTC) nearing record highs after a prolonged crypto winter. Institutional participants are getting increasingly involved in crypto, while tokenization of real-world assets like credit and U.S. Treasuries, is attracting even more firms to the blockchain space.
Safety concerns and rampant exploits, however, still hinder broader blockchain adoption. Users lost around $2 billion of assets last year in hacks, while the impact of crypto exchange FTX’s dramatic collapse still reverberates in the industry.
Utila aims to help institutions and crypto companies manage their digital asset holdings in a non-custodial, secure crypto wallet compatible with multiple blockchains. It uses multiparty computational (MPC) tech, which divides a single private key among multiple parties, eliminating a single point of failure.
The platform offers a simplified user interface, a fast onboarding process taking less than five minutes and recently added enhanced tokenization capabilities to better serve token issuers, Bentzi Rabi, co-founder and CEO of Utila, said in an interview with CoinDesk prior to publication.
The company has onboarded 35 institutions and digital asset firms to its platform to date and has facilitated $3 billion in crypto transactions over the past six months, a spokesperson said.
Utila's investment followed competitor MPC wallet provider Fordefi's 10 million fundraising last month.
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Krisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.