Cryptocurrency accounting and compliance platform Bitwave today announced that it has closed a $15 million Series A led by Hack VC and Blockchain Capital, with participation from other funds including SignalFire.
Bitwave Co-Founders Pat White and Amy Kalnoki Say Luck that this grant will help develop Bitwave Institutional, a new product aimed at corporate customers with complex accounting needs, such as custodians and exchanges.
The funding round comes amid an industry-wide discussion about transparency, with many calling for issuers to reserve evidenceliability and undergo a complete third-party audit, all of which Bitwave helps facilitate.
“No bullet can stop FTX,” White said. “The problem is this overall problem when they have really bad processes.”
With Bitwave, he argued that companies could develop that system of processes and controls. The company now considers major crypto companies from OpenSea to Anchorage as customers and hopes to grow Bitwave Institutional to be able to serve more companies.
Although obvious recession funding during Crypto Winter, enterprise-focused companies like Bitwave continued to raise money, such as Fordefi, lift up an $18 million seed round in November to launch the institution’s DeFi wallet.
Kalnoki said this reflects a trend Bitwave is seeing, with business increasingly adopting cryptocurrencies and digital assets, even as volatility continues for retail investors. .
“We are focused on being a critical piece of infrastructure for businesses to adopt digital assets,” she said.
White points to recent recommendations by the Financial Accounting Standards Board that crypto assets are reported at fair value, White said this will allow financial executives to be more comfortable holding cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin across the board. their balance sheet.
Ed Roman, CEO of Hack VC, said his company is a Bitwave client as well as an investor, which is one of the reasons the company decided to lead the round. He said Luck that the crash of FTX will lead to a migration from centralized exchanges to DeFi over time and that Bitwave can help with DeFi accounting, which sets it apart from other platforms.
Spencer Bogart, a general partner at Blockchain Capital, predicts there will be 100 times as many businesses in the crypto space five years from now, and they all need a product like Bitwave to function. motion.
He added that the overlap between those who understand tax and accounting, business software, and crypto is minimal.
“Pat and Amy are probably two of the only people in the world sitting in the middle of that Venn diagram,” says Bogart.
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