London-based crypto regtech Coinfirm has picked up some useful coins with the close of its Series A fundraising of $8 million (£5.8 million), and appointed Dr. Mircea Mihaescu as its new CEO.
Founded in 2016, Coinfirm works in the field of blockchain analytics and regtech solutions. The company specialises in blockchain AML services and fraud investigations, and supports 1,500+ crypto assets including Bitcoin and the ERC-20 standard (a standard used for creating and issuing smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain).
Coinfirm says the investment will enable it to expand its offering to the Asian and US markets.
The Series A was co-led by SIX Fintech Ventures, the corporate venture arm of SIX, and FiveT Fintech, followed by MiddleGame Ventures. Mission Gate and CoinShares also participated in this round.
“The Series A unlocks Coinfirm’s potential in the crypto compliance and analytics space as we expand in a fast-paced growth market,” explains Mihaescu.
In the first half of 2021 Coinfirm almost doubled its SaaS customer count (to an unspecified number) and grew monthly recurring revenue by over 70%. The firm has added new features to its flagship product, the AML Platform, in addition to creating a number of crypto compliance solutions.
Coinfirm’s AML Platform uses 330+ proprietary risk algorithms to provide a solution to regulatory requirements for both CeFi and DeFi.
Pawel Kuskowski, Coinfirm’s co-founder, will hand over the CEO baton to Mihaescu. The latter joined the company in March as Executive Chairman.
In a 30-year career, Mihaescu has previously been a banker in both North America and Russia, a VC, an IBM executive, an academic, and the founder of startups. He has held the role of COO of Moven, founded SBT Ventures with notable investments into platforms such as eToro and headed Digital Ventures at Sberbank.
Alexander Christen, CEO of FiveT Fintech, will join Pascal Bouvier, General Partner at MiddleGame Ventures, and Mihaescu on Coinfirm’s Board of Directors. Maximilian Spelmeyer of SIX Fintech Ventures and Daniel O’Brien of Bird Capital join Coinfirm’s board as non-director members.
According to Coinfirm, its risk management platform is used by governments, financial institutions, custodians, payment providers, investment funds and exchanges. It has over 250 customers and names listed on its website include Binance, Bank Polski and Finoa.
This month, Coinfirm partnered with Notabene, an FATF Travel Rule solution provider.
Coinfirm is headquartered in London, with the company retaining Warsaw and Torun offices in Poland, and Tokyo.
By the way, earlier this month Ryan McCall, CEO at Zerocap, in an article for eWeek UK, looked at regulatory oversight, volatility and misconceptions about investing in Bitcoin.
In addition, last month eWeek UK discussed ‘How the Cryptocurrency Market is Evolving’ in the UK. The article notes that the global cryptocurrency market already stands at $2.48 trillion (£1.8 trillion) and is expected to reach double digits in the coming decade.
