Cycles, a startup building an open, 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 latest round brings its total funding to $8.7 million following a $2.3 million pre-seed round in 2025.
The funding will be used to accelerate development and rollout of the Cycles clearing network and scale the first products built on top of it, including Cycles Prime, an institutional product designed to enable trading firms to net OTC obligations privately across the network. The company said Cycles Prime reduces liquidity requirements and counterparty exposure without requiring collateral, asset movement, or changes in counterparties. The platform is launching with Lynq and FalconX as anchor partners.
Cycles explained that traditional financial institutions use clearing systems to offset obligations between counterparties so only net differences need to move. According to the company, crypto markets largely operate without this infrastructure today, resulting in liquidity bottlenecks, increased counterparty risk, and settlement inefficiencies across billions of dollars in daily trading activity.
The company was spun out of Informal Systems and is led by Ethan Buchman. Cycles said its multilateral clearing network nets obligations across crypto trading and payment flows in an effort to improve capital efficiency and support broader ecosystem growth.
Cycles pointed to market volatility events as evidence of the need for clearing infrastructure in digital assets. The company cited an October 10, 2025 deleveraging event in which more than $19 billion in crypto leverage was liquidated in roughly a single day, noting that much of the digital asset market still operates on a gross basis without netting, requiring participants to fully prefund trades.
In addition to Cycles Prime, the company is also launching Cycles Pay, a stablecoin payments application for businesses and individuals. The app routes payments through the Cycles clearing engine, which nets obligations across participants to minimize capital movement. The company said invoicing, expense management, and future credit features are intended to help businesses optimize cash flow using 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
