Yesterday cryptocurrency market maker Keyrock announced a $72 million Series B funding round. It includes SIX Fintech Ventures and Middlegame Ventures, who both participated in its €4.3 m Series A two years ago. Ripple joined the Series B as a new backer.
“Keyrock has provided scalable liquidity solutions to all kinds of stakeholders in the digital asset space, including Ripple,” said Maxime Fages, Director of Institutional Markets at Ripple. “We have been partners for over three years and watched Keyrock’s global success.”
Founded in Belgium, the company has an office in London with plans to expand to Switzerland and Singapore in 2023. It says its trading volume has grown threefold in the past year while market activity has shrunk by 50%.
Market making in crypto is focused on algorithmic trading and Keyrock participates in 85 venues, including both centralized and decentralized exchanges.
It can be a risky business. Alameda Research went bust last month, causing a halt in withdrawals at Genesis Capital, the lending arm of market maker Genesis Trading. Some of the biggest players in the sector are linked to high frequency trading firms such as Cumberland (DRW), Virtu Financial and Jump Crypto. Major crypto native players include SBI-owned B2C2, GSR, Wintermute and Kairon Labs.
Meanwhile, SIX has made several investments in the digital assets sector apart from its own SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), which is active in both crypto and tokenized traditional securities. Other SIX blockchain investments have included daura, Custodigit and Omniex.
Talking about Keyrock, Andreas Iten, Head SIX Fintech Ventures said, “They showed incredible resilience and with the current founding round we believe Keyrock will establish itself as one of the top-tier liquidity solution providers for digital assets not only in Europe but globally.”
