The crypto protocol Centrifuge today announced a funding round from major industry companies, including Coinbase and Block Tower Capital.
This is specifically a $4 million round that is coming at a time when Centrifuge has seen tremendous momentum in recent months and a growing focus on real assets in the financial and cryptocurrency sectors.
Other investors participating in the investment round include L1 Digital and Scytale.
Earlier this year, crypto investment firm Block Tower Capital announced a $3 million strategic partnership with Centrifuge, which funded more than $182 million in assets.
Lucas Vogelsang, CEO and co-founder of Centrifuge, said:
“We’re building the credit market of the future and along with that we need to build out the financial ecosystem for institutions to transact on chain. Partners like Coinbase and BlockTower are essential in building critical parts of this infrastructure, as Centrifuge becomes the go-to platform for real-world assets and on chain secured credit.”
Summary
How does Centrifuge work
Centrifuge essentially brings assets into DeFi, enabling a range of companies to access financing without having intermediaries, but integrating other decentralized finance platforms such as Maker and Aave.
Thomas Klocanas, General Partner & Head of Venture at BlockTower Capital, said:
“The intersection of DeFi and traditional credit, often dubbed Real World Assets within the digital asset space, is one of our highest conviction theses at BlockTower across our strategies. We’re extremely excited about continuing to support Centrifuge, who have been pioneering this use case since early days, in their journey to re-platform private credit markets at scale.”
Using Centrifuge, companies can tokenize off-chain assets such as mortgages, bills and consumer loans to create pools secured by crypto assets. When placed on the platform and then transitioned to being on chain, these assets are transacted by investors and anyone is able to provide liquidity.
Anthony Bassili, Head of Asset Allocators at Coinbase Institutional, said:
“Coinbase has a mission of increasing economic freedom globally through open financial systems. A feature of a vibrant crypto economy that serves all kinds of participants, investors, businesses, and institutions requires access to more asset classes like credit on-chain. As institutional adoption of crypto continues to grow, real-world assets are a critical component for broad and diverse portfolio construction within the crypto economy.”
Everything you need to know about the new crypto protocol
Founded in 2017, Centrifuge is a DeFi protocol that allows investors and borrowers to be connected with liquidity without, of course, going through any bank.
The platform is based on Ethereum, but it also has a bridge on Polygon’s blockchain.
Centrifuge also has a native token, CFG which is worth $0.26 at the time of writing this article. CFG reached a value of $2.58 in October 2021, while the lowest price recorded was in May 2022 when the token was worth $0.16.
