- Cryptocurrency compliance and risk management platform company TRM Labs announced it raised $4.2 million in funding
TRM — a cryptocurrency compliance and risk management platform company — announced it raised $4.2 million in funding from Initialized Capital, Blockchain Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Y Combinator. Including this round of funding, the company raised a total of $5.9 million for its seed round of funding.
“At TRM, we are fueled by a fundamental belief that cryptocurrency and blockchain can democratize access to financial services and empower billions of people,” said Esteban Castaño, co-founder and CEO of TRM Labs. “By building solutions to prevent cryptocurrency fraud and financial crime, we enable this vision and build a safer financial system for billions of people.”
As the growth of cryptocurrencies is a global phenomenon and brings both opportunities and new risks to financial institutions, TRM is accelerating the safe adoption of crypto assets with its platform designed to help financial institutions monitor and mitigate these risks at scale. And compliance teams at financial institutions use TRM to risk-score their cryptocurrency-related transactions, customers, or partnerships thus helping them to simplify customer due diligence and meet regulatory requirements.
TRM integrates with over a dozen blockchains and analyzes billions of virtual asset transactions to detect signs of fraud and financial crime like money laundering in real-time. TRM originally launched out of the startup accelerator Y Combinator this summer. And since then, it has delivered its cryptocurrency compliance and risk management solutions to global financial institutions including major banks, brokerages, and exchanges across US, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
“PayPal has been trusted by consumers for over 20 years because of its emphasis on fraud prevention and risk management,” added Rahul Raina, co-founder and CTO of TRM Labs. “Their strategic investment in TRM signals their continued commitment to ensuring safety and compliance as the digital payments landscape evolves and innovates.”
Initialized Capital — which was an early investor in Coinbase and Digit — also participated in this round of funding.
“Illicit activity is an existential problem for crypto since it impacts the willingness of financial institutions, regulators, and consumers to embrace crypto,” explained Garry Tan, co-founder and managing partner of Initialized. “We can’t imagine more mission-oriented founders who can bridge the worlds of traditional finance, compliance, and crypto to tackle this critical problem.”
This round of funding will be used for growing
TRM’s engineering and data science teams, expanding into new markets, and accelerating product development.
“TRM provides a solution that every financial institution needs today because they are either establishing plans to directly engage with crypto or because they inevitably have customers or partnerships that are in some way exposed to cryptocurrency transactions,” commented Blockchain Capital general partner Spencer Bogart, CFA.
