Cryptocurrency compliance service Notabene has secured $10.2m in its Series A investment round, as it helps crypto companies meet travel rule compliance.
F-Prime Capital and Jump Capital served as the co-lead investors. As part of the deal, Jump Capital partner Peter Johnson will join the Notabene’s board of directors.
Other backers to the Series A included, Gemini Frontier Fund, BlockFi’s venture arm, Illuminate Financial, CMT Digital, Fenbushi Capital and ComplyAdvantage’s CEO Charlie Delingpole. The round also saw Luno & Bitso, a customer of Notabene, invest.
Finally, there were a handful of reups, coming from Castle Island Ventures, Green Visor Capital and Signature Ventures.
With the equity injection, Notabene plans to bolster its product development, meet the rising demand for its services and build broader crypto counterparty risk management solutions.
The company’s CEO Pelle Braendgaard stated Notabene’s mission is to allow crypto native companies to comply with the ‘Travel Rule’. This regulation requires companies engaged in a transaction over a certain threshold to verify each other’s customers.
“The majority of crypto companies find themselves at a pivotal moment as regulators around the globe set forth long-awaited regulatory requirements,” Braendgaard said. “Conversely, the nature of permissionless blockchains makes it challenging to fulfil the technical requirements. Complying with new regulatory requirements will enable crypto companies to unlock trillions of institutional dollars, establish banking relationships, launch new products and bring trust to the industry.”
Regulators around the world are drafting more legislation around cryptocurrency space. In 2019, the Financial Action Task Force released guidelines that companies that custody and exchange virtual assets on behalf of customers must register with their local regulator and be licensed to operate in most jurisdictions.
Notabene added that it is impossible to transfer personally identifiable information through the blockchain for both sides of a transaction.
To combat this, the RegTech company leverages decentralized identity protocols to establish a trust framework that allows companies to meet compliance with the Travel Rule.
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