A $25 million funding round for crypto lending startup Compound was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, according to a new report from Fortune. Other top investors in the round include Paradigm, Bain Capital Ventures, and Polychain Capital.
“Compound is a lending protocol that is open to anyone in the world, that disintermediates banks and allows anyone to earn interest on their money,” said Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon regarding the new partnership. “[...] We’ve worked with Robert and his team for over two years and think they are world-class technologists and entrepreneurs.”
Crypto news: Compound raises $25M from @a16z, plans to bring lending to consumer exchanges and wallets.
Upshot = ordinary people will soon earn interest on their cryptohttps://t.co/V667fujlFB — Jeff Roberts (@jeffjohnroberts) November 14, 2019
Compound hopes to use the funds to integrate with exchanges, become “more accessible” to ordinary people
According to Fortune’s report, founder Robert Leshner says that Compound has more than $150 million in assets on its platform, and will use the funds from the latest investment round to “make the service more accessible to ordinary people.”
In this case, “ordinary people” seems to mean large-scale customers as well as those of us who are not completely “crypto fluent”--indeed, Compound also has plans to integrate with cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets, and custodians by the end of the next year. The ultimate goal is to be able to lend out their cryptocurrency on Compound through a user-friendly platform such as Coinbase or Kraken.
Multicoin’s exchange thesis is that @compoundfinance is so important, that exchanges will Fork it.
Exchanges: if that idea is interesting, let’s chat. I’ll help you take over the world. https://t.co/CwRSe7MIB3 — ? Leshner (@rleshner) October 30, 2019
Compound’s funding round follows another a16z-led funding round earlier this month when Blockchain -based data storage startup Arweave managed to secure $5 million in funding. Union Square Ventures and Multicoin Capital also participated in the round.
