Utila has raised $11.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by NFX and Wing VC to support the development of its institutional cryptocurrency platform. Framework Ventures and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, Charlie Songhurst and Surojit Chatterjee also participated in the round.
Utila allows institutions and developers to securely manage their digital assets through a non-custodial, chain-agnostic wallet. The platform has already been used by dozens of institutional investors and cryptocurrency companies to facilitate more than $3 billion worth of transactions in the past six months, the company claimed.
The funds were raised throughout 2023 and will be used to accelerate product development and expand Utila’s current team to 25 people, a Utila spokesperson told The Block. Utila declined to provide an evaluation or comment on the round structure.
According to the team, Utila is designed to support businesses with the operational, regulatory and security challenges associated with cryptocurrency adoption. They claim that existing institutional cryptocurrency wallets are hampered by complex user experiences.
“The transition from a traditional custodian trust company to Utila was a pivotal moment for 1Konto, addressing key challenges with an innovative and efficient solution,” said Edwin Handschuh, co-founder and CEO of digital asset trading platform 1konto. “Thanks to the intuitive UI/ UX that significantly reduces the learning curve and enables quick agreement with customers.”
“Utila is making enterprise-grade wallets more accessible, easier to use and more secure than ever before,” said Morgan Beller, NFX General Partner.
How Utila Works
Utilia’s non-custodial wallet allows organizations to maintain control of their assets across a variety of networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains, and Solana.
The platform is based on multi-party computing (MPC) key management and claims to integrate customers’ exchange accounts, DeFi, and bank accounts, providing onboarding in under 5 minutes. MPC involves splitting the private key into distributed parts across multiple parties, allowing them to jointly execute cryptocurrency transactions without a single party having access to the entire key.
Utila’s customers include institutions such as hedge funds, OTC desks, market makers and prime brokers that utilize Utila for their trading operations, as well as cryptocurrency-based organizations such as custodians, exchanges and token issuers, the company explained.
“Utila is more than just a cryptocurrency wallet. It is a comprehensive ecosystem that solves the current challenges in cryptocurrency asset management,” said Bentzi Rabi, Utila co-founder and CEO.
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