Stably, a United States venture-backed stablecoin and asset tokenization infrastructure provider, announced it has secured an undisclosed amount of funding in a recent pre-Series A equity financing round led by Morgan Creek Capital, Jackson Fu from Cream and Sunny Lu from VeChain. Other investors included Hard Yaka, Bloccelerate, B21 Capital, Lou Kerner from Blockchain Coinvestors, David Choi from Taureon Capital, Beenext and Pay It Forward.
The fresh round of funding will enable Stably’s 20-plus member team to pursue several key strategic initiatives in 2022, one of which is rapidly tripling its engineering team’s size to further improve Stably’s stablecoin-as-a-service offerings. Another is expanding the company’s fiat-to-stablecoin gateway to meet growing demand across various emerging blockchain ecosystems, including non-custodial wallets and Web3 applications for decentralized finance (DeFi), GameFi, nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces and even metaverses.
Currently, the more than $160-billion global stablecoin market is highly fragmented across nearly 100 different blockchain protocols, and many lack adequate fiat-currency access points — or “on-ramps” — for their end-users. On top of this, the fiat-to-stablecoin on-ramping market itself still remains inefficient. For example, it may cost between 20% and 40% to purchase Circle’s USD Coin (USDC), a popular U.S. dollar stablecoin, via leading fiat-to-crypto gateway providers such as MoonPay or Simplex.
To differentiate itself from other fiat-to-crypto gateways, Stably mainly focuses on providing stablecoins for “small-to-mid cap” blockchain platforms — i.e., “emerging” blockchains with native tokens between $100-million and $10 billion in total market capitalization. These nascent blockchains with enormous growth potential are still vastly underserved by most stablecoin issuers and fiat-ramp providers today.
“Sunny Lu decided to participate in our round because he was also seeking for a practical and fast stablecoin-as-a-service solution for the VeChain ecosystem,” said Stably CEO and co-founder Kory Hoang. “Practically speaking, Stably was the only company in this space that could quickly integrate with the VeChainThor blockchain to launch a compliant stablecoin within a few months of our initial discussions.”
Over the past 12 months, Stably has integrated its stablecoin infrastructure, products and services with seven emerging blockchain networks, including VeChainThor, DigitalBits and Chia Network. The company, via its regulated financial institution partners, processed more than $100 million in transaction volume from users in 2021 and grew its total revenue by more than tenfold compared to the previous year. Stably also helped launch a gold-backed branded stablecoin recently for Kitco Digital Metals Group, a Canada-based retailer. These achievements, in turn, helped attract significant institutional investor interest in Stably’s pre-Series A round.
“As a leading incubator of FinTech and blockchain technology solutions, I saw the unique potential of Stably’s Stablecoin-as-a-Service platform right away,” says Jackson Fu, Founder of CREAM. “Our strategy and community building capabilities will see that this potential is maximized. As such, we are excited to invest in this round of financing as the lead investor, and to become a Stably board member going forward. We will see much happening with Stably, stay tuned!”
Going forward, Hoang predicts that many DeFi, GameFi, NFT marketplaces and metaverse activities will take place on emerging blockchain networks. He is planning for Stably to integrate with another 12 emerging blockchains by the end of this year. Hoang estimates there will be 100-plus emerging blockchains in need of stablecoin infrastructure by the end of 2022, and even 300-plus by 2025.
About Stably
Stably is a venture capital-backed fintech startup from Seattle with a focus on providing asset tokenization and stablecoin payment infrastructure for emerging blockchain networks, Web3 wallets and applications such as DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces and metaverse platforms. The company’s mission is bridging money from traditional finance to the digital economy by providing Web3 users with fiat-to-stablecoin on-ramps that are faster, cheaper, secure and globally accessible. For more information about Stably, please visit www.stably.io. For any press and media inquiries, please email marketing@stably.io. For all other inquiries, please email hello@stably.io.
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