Crypto Risk Management Platform TRM Labs Raises $4.2 Million

The cryptocurrency and risk management platform TRM Labs disclosed that it has obtained $4.2 million in investments from Blockchain Capital, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator and PayPal Ventures upping the seed round’s total raised sum to $5.9 million.

The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2018 and assists financial institutions in estimating, monitoring and reducing cryptocurrency-related risks.

Co-founder and CEO of TRM Labs, Esteban Castaño, shared the company’s goals:

“At TRM, we are fueled by a fundamental belief that cryptocurrency and blockchain can democratize access to financial services and empower billions of people. By building solutions to prevent cryptocurrency fraud and financial crime, we enable this vision and build a safer financial system for billions of people.”

We've raised $1.7M in a seed round led by Blockchain Capital to change growth and compliance for crypto companies.

Couldn’t be more excited to partner with an amazing team of investors!https://t.co/TwSrsr8H3a

— TRM Labs (@trmlabs) January 31, 2019

The cryptocurrency expansion is not slowing down and affects many business sectors, bringing new opportunities but new risks as well. TRM’s platform is created to aid financial institutions in monitoring and reducing related risks at scale.

That way TRM stimulates the safe adoption of crypto assets. The platform is primarily used by compliance teams at financial organizations where they evaluate the risk on crypto-related transactions, partnerships and customers.

That way the organization is able to facilitate customer due diligence and comply with the necessary regulatory requirements.

The TRM platform can be integrated with a number of blockchains and can inspect billions of virtual asset deals, identifying, in real time, any signs of fraud.

Since its launch out of the Y Combinator during the summer, TRM has brought its risk management and compliance services to banks, exchanges and brokerages across the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The other co-founder and CTO of TRM Labs, Rahul Raina, commented how PayPal’s commitment helped them a lot:

“PayPal has been trusted by consumers for over 20 years because of its emphasis on fraud prevention and risk management. Their strategic investment in TRM signals their continued commitment to ensuring safety and compliance as the digital payments landscape evolves and innovates.”

Another company that helped during the seed round funding was Initialized Capital, which also invested in Digit and Coinbase.

Co-founder and managing partner of Initialized Capital, Garry Tan, shared their motivation:

 “Illicit activity is an existential problem for crypto since it impacts the willingness of financial institutions, regulators, and consumers to embrace crypto. We can’t imagine more mission-oriented founders who can bridge the worlds of traditional finance, compliance, and crypto to tackle this critical problem.”

TRM will use this financing to expand their data science and engineering teams, stimulate product development and broaden their operations to new markets.

Spencer Bogart, General Partner at Blockchain Capital sees the financial institutions’ need for this type of solution:

“TRM provides a solution that every financial institution needs today because they are either establishing plans to directly engage with crypto or because they inevitably have customers or partnerships that are in some way exposed to cryptocurrency transactions.”