Nivaura, the Startup Behind the First Cryptocurrency Bond Raises $20 Million

Two years after making news as being the first platform to settle a blockchain-based cryptocurrency bond, London-based Nivaura is making the rounds again with its latest funding event.

This time, the startup is in the news due to its recently held $20 million investment round, which was led by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

As reported by Reuters, the startup received an undisclosed amount of funds from LSEG in the investment round, only the total value of which was made public by the firm.

Other notable participants in the funding round included Santader InnoVentures, the venture capital arm for Banco Santander.

As a service that specializes in the issuance and administration of corporate bonds, equity and loans, Nivaura made headlines in 2017 when it issued the world’s first cryptocurrency-dominated bond through its developed system.

Nivaura uses a combination of clearing methods that include conventional digital infrastructure as well as the usage of blockchain to settle its financial instruments. This system allows Nivaura to cut processing times by up to 80 percent, which in this day and age of competitive processes is a significant value add for the sector.

Through these systems, Nivaura provides holistically designed digital solutions to businesses in order to support their own financial systems. Since the efficiency in time also cut costs by a large margin, it opens doors for small scale yet passionate companies to explore the capital issuance market. In turn, this allows the sector to expand and for more solutions to be available to clients at competitive rates.

The firm’s clients can use its provided solutions for direct issuance of assets, to tokenize securities, and to automate their workflow for digital banking services. Reportedly, this is what attracted LSEG towards Nivaura in the first place.

But this is not the first time that the LSEG is venturing into the world of blockchain.

In January 2019, a cryptocurrency exchange from Hong Kong noted that it would use LSEG’s matching system to trade cryptocurrencies. Whereas, in 2017, the LSEG collaborated with IBM to develop a blockchain platform in Italy for the issuance of private shares of small to medium enterprises.

As reported by Reuters, LSEG plans to use the technology developed and enhanced by Nivaura to add to its own operations with optimal efficiency, and to develop new and optimal systems on the way.