London-based cryptocurrency custody firm Copper has raised $50 million in Series B funding.
Announced Tuesday, Copper’s $50 million round was co-led by Dawn Capital and Target Global, and included Illuminate Financial Management, as well as existing investors LocalGlobe and MMC Ventures.
Dawn Capital and Target Global led Copper’s Series A funding in February 2020, bringing total capital raised to date to $60 million.
The safekeeping of digital assets is a crucial component for large or traditional institutions looking to enter the cryptocurrency space, and specialist crypto custodians have become desirable entities, evidenced by a slew of recent acquisitions and partnerships.
Copper’s muscular raise broadly reflects the bull run that has been happening across the cryptocurrency industry in the last several months.
“We have seen revenues and client growth tripling in the course of around the quarter, and meeting that demand has created some challenges, but in a good way,” said Copper CEO Dmitry Tokarev in an interview. “We are involved in a lot of conversations with financial institutions, with something like 84 NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] in place.”
Tokarev said Copper currently has some 200 staff and plans to double that number over the next 18 months or so.
Asked if Elon Musk’s recent tweets about possibly selling off Tesla’s bitcoin holding might lead to a cooling down of companies looking to add crypto to their balance sheet, Tokarev said: “We have a long term vision of how financial market infrastructure will evolve. Maybe it’s not as sexy as DOGE going to the moon, but we tend to view all that stuff as just background noise.”
See also: Copper Now Enables Funds to Create Complex Crypto-Backed Securities