2 new investors back digital currency startup Curv

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One of the world’s largest investment firms has led fresh funding in digital currency custody infrastructure provider Curv. Franklin Templeton joins existing investors including Coinbase and the Digital Currency Group.

Franklin Templeton has been one of Curv’s clients since November 2019. The California-based holding company announced that it was using Curv’s wallet service to protect digital assets in its new money market fund. It has now joined as an investor, leading a funding round that saw participation from fintech VC firm Illuminate Financial Management.

Joe Boerio, the chief risk officer at Franklin Templeton commented, “Curv’s cloud-based service and tech stack eliminates the concept of private keys through multi-party computation (MPC), allowing for blockchain transaction signing in a secure, distributed way to protect against cyber breaches and insider collusion. We are excited to participate in Curv’s journey as it sets a new standard for digital asset security and scales its business across major financial institutions across the globe.”

On its part, Illuminate invested in Curv as it believes the New York-based startup is poised to greatly benefit from the rising participation of institutional investors in digital currencies. The VC firm pledged to use its ‘deep and trusted network across many major market participants’ to help Curv build on its growth and expansion momentum.

Curv seeks to eliminate the single point of failure that private keys present through keyless cryptography. The company supports Bitcoin SV and many of the other major digital currencies.

Founded three years ago, Curv has grown rapidly and attracted several multinational firms that have ventured into digital currencies. This growth has further been amplified by positive regulations in recent times. One of these is an announcement by the U.S. Office of Comptroller of Currency that allowed banks to offer digital currency custody. In December 2019, German regulator BaFin also made a similar move.

Curv’s rapid growth has attracted some of the big investors in the digital currency industry and beyond. It has now raised $29.5 million from 10 investors, company insights platform Crunchbase reveals. Some of the investors include the Digital Currency Group, Coinbase, CommerzVentures, Digital Garage and Team8.

Gabriel Frank, the director of sales at Curv was one of the speakers at CoinGeek Live which concluded earlier this month. In a panel discussion with Genesis’ Sebastian Higgs and TrustChains’ Karen Wendel, he discussed some of the prevalent challenges in digital currency custody and how Curv is addressing them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAEoXeN0b8M&feature=youtu.be&t=12459