The Ledger Weekly: Alta’s $47.5M leads $107M in five raises

This edition covers two weeks, since our last edition on 30 Oct. Alta, a start-up building a blockchain for banks and payment firms, raised a $47.5 million Series A on Tuesday, led by Index Ventures. It is the biggest of the five, and its first partner is the payments company Airwallex.

Griffin, a UK bank that powers accounts for fintechs and platforms, raised $20 million on Thursday to add cards and stablecoin services. It is the only round here with a stated valuation, above $100 million. The pattern is a familiar one: money is going to businesses that connect traditional finance to tokens, not to tokens themselves.

The other three are narrower. Uranium Digital raised $16.5 million to trade physical uranium with blockchain-based ownership records, LO:TECH raised $12 million for round-the-clock market making, and Marble raised $11 million for compute financing and trading.

Total: $107.0 million across five rounds, 2 to 13 Nov. The list covers rounds CryptoWatchDesk could verify to a company post or release and a second outlet where one exists; Marble’s is a company post only. It is not a complete tracker.

Deals of note

Alta’s $47.5 million Series A. GV, Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg and Capital 49 joined Index, and the company says total funding is now $80 million including a $32.5 million seed. Its pitch is a blockchain with privacy and compliance built in; Airwallex, whose co-founder Jack Zhang is also an Alta co-founder, will connect its payments network to it.

Griffin’s $20 million Series B. Notion Capital, A+ Ventures, Nordic Ninja and Breega took part, and the bank says it serves more than 80 companies, including Uber, and that recurring revenue grew 3.2 times in the year to September (unaudited). The business model is a bank that other companies build on: Griffin provides banking infrastructure under other firms’ brands, and the new money adds cards and stablecoin reserve services (background: what a dollar stablecoin is).

Uranium Digital’s $16.5 million Series A. Existing investors Portal Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group followed on, according to Crypto Briefing, and the company did not disclose a valuation. The platform aims to replace brokers and emailed contracts in physical uranium trading.

Also this week

Polymarket cut staff. The prediction market confirmed to Fox Business that it had laid off employees and ended contractor agreements as part of a reorganisation, and disputed reports that 30% of its workforce was affected without giving its own figure. “As we’ve grown and brought on new leadership, we’ve reorganized to set the company up for its next phase of growth,” a spokesperson said.

BNY will offer staking through Figment. Figment said eligible institutional clients will be able to stake supported assets held on BNY’s Digital Asset Custody platform using Figment’s validators. BNY’s head of digital asset custody, Ralf Roth, is quoted in Figment’s release; the release gave no launch date.

Two Maple executives are leaving. Maple Finance said co-founder and executive chairman Joe Flanagan is leaving in what it called “an agreed and orderly transition”, and Cointelegraph reported that chief operating officer Ryan O’Shea will step down on 27 Nov. Flanagan wrote of differing views on strategy with co-founder and CEO Sidney Powell.

On the exchange side, Gemini’s third-quarter results did not mention a sale of its UK and European units to KAST, which CoinDesk reported on 12 Nov. Neither company has confirmed it.

The Ledger Weekly returns next Friday.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.