Cycles, a startup building an open and privacy-preserving clearing network for crypto markets and stablecoin payments, announced it has raised $6.4 million in funding led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, Primitive Ventures, and angel investors. The company said the round brings its total funding to $8.7 million following a $2.3 million pre-seed round in 2025.
Cycles plans to use the funding to accelerate development and rollout of its clearing network along with scaling its initial products, including Cycles Prime, an institutional offering that enables trading firms to privately net OTC obligations across the network. The platform is designed to reduce liquidity requirements and counterparty exposure without requiring collateral, movement of assets, or changes in counterparties.
Cycles Prime is launching with Lynq and FalconX as anchor partners.
The company explained that traditional financial institutions rely on clearing systems to reduce the amount of money moving between counterparties by offsetting obligations and only settling net differences. According to Cycles, crypto markets largely lack this infrastructure today, contributing to liquidity bottlenecks, settlement inefficiencies, and elevated counterparty risk across billions of dollars in daily trading activity.
Cycles was spun out of Informal Systems and is led by Ethan Buchman. The company said its multilateral clearing network is designed to improve capital efficiency across crypto trading and payment flows while unlocking additional growth opportunities.
The announcement also highlighted broader instability in digital asset markets tied to the absence of clearing infrastructure. Cycles cited market data showing that on October 10, 2025, more than $19 billion in crypto leverage was liquidated in approximately one day, with 70% of forced liquidations occurring within 40 minutes. The company said many digital asset markets still operate on a gross settlement basis, requiring participants to fully prefund trades, which can amplify market fragility during volatile periods.
Cycles said it is building a unified clearing network that will serve as a base layer for capital-efficient financial applications. The company is initially launching two products on top of its clearing architecture: Cycles Prime for institutional trading firms and Cycles Pay for stablecoin payments.
Cycles Pay is designed as a stablecoin payments application for businesses and individuals to send and receive payments, manage idle balances, and maintain privacy. Payments are routed through the company’s clearing engine, which nets obligations across participants to reduce capital movement. The company added that invoicing, expense management, and future credit features are intended to help businesses optimize cash flow on stablecoin rails.
KEY QUOTES:
“Clearing is a financial superpower that has historically only been available to large financial institutions. Our goal is to bring that superpower to everyone else, through a privacy-preserving clearing network with capital efficiency at its core, and without centralized intermediaries.”
Ethan Buchman, Co-founder and CEO, Cycles
“Clearing is the cornerstone of capital-efficient markets like foreign exchange allowing the movement of massive volumes of value without crippling liquidity requirements. We see Cycles providing an essential coordination layer to bring the efficiency and effectiveness of clearing to new markets. Doing this will allow businesses to clear and settle payments privately, optimize capital flow, and reduce the need for idle capital. As global adoption accelerates, Cycles can become a category defining standard for how value is settled and netted across entire ecosystems and markets.”
Rob Schmults, General Partner, Blockchange Ventures
“Legacy settlement rails weren’t built for today’s 24/7 global markets. We support Cycles’ mission to create a unified clearing layer for on-chain finance, an important step in modernizing global financial infrastructure. As a pilot partner for Cycles Prime, FalconX is proud to contribute to a more capital-efficient method for institutions to manage short-term obligations.”
Matt Lepow, Trade Ops Lead, FalconX
