G1 Ventures, gumi Cryptos and Shima Capital have co-led a $5.5m investment round in Finery Markets, a multi-dealer electronic marketplace for institutional participants and a trading solutions provider for crypto markets.

Investors in the round also included Communitas Capital, DV Chain, GravityX, Unlimint, Daedalus Angels, oneAlpha, Floating Point Group and other industry leaders also joined the round.

Given the circumstances in the crypto markets following FTX collapse, it was a “really challenging task to keep all investors aboard”, commented  Sergey Klinkov, Managing Director for Brand and Strategy at Finery Markets.

“We are proud to have them all, and Communitas particularly, as this is a sign of their confidence in the model we have been developing,” he told Traders Magazine.

Established in 2019, Finery Markets enables over 70 businesses working with digital assets internationally to get access to deep liquidity pools offered by leading global liquidity providers. 

The pre-trade and post-trade functionality of the platform provides clients with price intelligence, full trade transparency, settlement flexibility, market and counterparty risks control, reporting tools and on-chain transactions monitoring.

The platform enjoyed 12x YoY revenue growth in 2021 and kept growing in 2022 despite the challenging market conditions.

Rui Zhang, Co-founder and Managing Partner of gumi Cryptos Capital, said: “As we observed in the TradFi world, a majority of the transactions are actually completed via OTC market, rather than exchanges. We believe it will be the same for the crypto market.” 

As a multi-dealer execution venue, Finery is able to provide a much more efficient trading operation, lower execution cost, and safer clearing control for institutional users, he said.

Arseny Klekovkin, Managing Partner of G1 Ventures, added: “We have been tracking development of Finery shortly after its inception and can only commend the agility and evolution of the team, as well as impressive validation of institutionally focused and regulatory compliant business model.” 

“The team has placed P2P and marketplace philosophy at the core of Finery early on and currently it is becoming more than ever relevant for any corporate user of digital assets. Recent events and failures of centralized onramps and trading venues underscore the fundamental advantages of Finery and will support its further growth even in the face of challenging markets. Looking forward to working together with Ilya and Konstantin to enable further success of Finery,” he said.

Finery Markets will use the proceeds of the round to grow its team in the US and APAC region, extend its prime brokerage and liquidity provider networks, introduce new pre- and post-trade services and expand to new asset classes and complimentary business lines.

According to Konstantin Shulga, co-founder and CEO of Finery Markets, the firm aims to establish best practices across trading, risk management and operational standards for crypto. 

“We see our role as a foundational building block for maturing market infrastructure, which makes markets more efficient and sustainable. As a marketplace, we focused on bringing in a diverse mix of leading investors that represent web3 funds, strategic partners and traditional venture capital firms, led by veterans of the electronic trading business,” he said.

“We are delighted to welcome our new investors, which have demonstrated confidence in our long-term vision and will help us to expand our market footprint,” he added.

Yida Gao, Managing General Partner of Shima Capital, added that given the recent market volatility and implosions in our space, institutions will trust centralized exchanges less.

“This gives Finery–a non-custodial model that does not require institutions to trust any third party with their coins–a sustainable edge.”