Today London-based Clearmatics announced it has raised more than $12m in a Series A funding round led by Route 66 Ventures from Virginia. The startup focuses on distributed ledger technology applications for the financial sector, including the Utility Settlement Coin (USC) project with 17 major financial institutions.
Clearmatics CEO Robert Sams said: “We are very excited to be working with investors who are so committed to disrupting legacy market structure through technology. This investment will enable us to create further DCNs and build a peer-to-peer ecosystem over the entire trade lifecycle, from trade execution to settlement.”
Existing investors TNF Capital and XTX Ventures also participated in this round. The startup says it plans to use the funds to extend its work on blockchain interoperability and transaction privacy. Additionally, the funds will go towards the set up its “Protocol Provider service” next year to facilitate the launch of USC.
The USC is a special kind of stable coin that is collateralized using deposits at central bank accounts. One of the main purposes is to enable on-chain settlement, particularly for equity and derivatives markets. The critical advantage is finality of payment because the token represents central bank cash.
Multiple blockchains will need to use USCs. Hence its probably no coincidence that one of Clearmatics other projects is Ion, an interoperability solution based on Ethereum’s Virtual Machine.
Earlier this year Clearmatics was one of a handful of international companies to assist the Bank of England in testing whether its updated Real-Time Gross Settlement is capable of supporting DLT.
