Crypto Facilities, a London-based digital asset trading platform, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding round, led by Pamir Gelenbe's AngelList syndicate.
Crypto Facilities Ltd, the London-based derivatives broker that launched bitcoin derivatives trading platform www.cryptofacilities.com in February 2015, is an Appointed Representative (AR) of Met Facilities LLP which is authorized and regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
CoinDesk reported that the company intends to use the funds to add new products and cryptocurrencies to its platform, grow its workforce and work more closely with US regulators. Currently, the company does not serve US customers and plans to spend some of the investment to work with both US and European regulators.
"For us it’s really expanding the platform by adding additional products, assets, derivatives. Just giving people more tools to use. We are still relatively narrow with bitcoin futures, but we are looking to scale”, Co-founder and CEO, Timo Schlaefer told CoinDesk.
Schlaefer added that over the forthcoming months, the firm plans to hire a handful of new employees, mostly developers.
In February, Crypto Facilities partnered with Ripple, a provider of global financial settlement solutions, to create a marketplace for XRP derivatives. Later in May, it collaborated with CME Group to develop two new products planned to launch in the fourth quarter of 2016: CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR) and CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index (RTI).
Speaking with CoinDesk, Gelenbe explained that the passion of the founders and the relative size of the bitcoin derivatives market compared to traditional derivatives convinced him to support the startup.
"In any mature derivatives market the trading of derivatives dwarfs compared to the trading of stocks," said Gelenbe. "We haven’t seen that yet happen in bitcoin, but we expect to see that in the future."
