Rho Labs secures $2.2m in pre-seed funding to launch its decentralised trading platform
The pre-seed round was led by Speedinvest to support the rollout of the company protocol in December.
≈ £1.8M at $1 = £0.8055 on 16 Nov 2023
Rho Labs is a London-based fintech startup building a non-custodial institutional-grade interest rate derivatives market.
Rho Labs has secured $2.2m in pre-seed funding to launch its decentralised trading platform, Rho Protocol. The round was led by Speedinvest, with participation from Keyrock, Re7 Capital, Daedalus Collective, and Copper CEO Dmitry Tokarev.
Founded in 2022 by former Copper chief product officer Alex Ryvkin, the London-based company is developing a non-custodial marketplace for interest rate derivatives. The upcoming platform aims to facilitate transparent and secure on-chain trading for both traditional rates, such as SOFR, and crypto-specific rates including staking and funding rates.
The capital will be deployed to support the rollout of Rho Protocol, which is scheduled for a December 2023 release following a private beta on Arbitrum.
From the founder
"Interest Rate Derivatives represent the largest asset class in traditional finance with over $500T in outstanding interest. Our ultimate goal is to introduce this market to the advantages of on-chain trading while offering crypto traders the opportunity to trade the most prominent rates in the ecosystem, as enjoyed by participants of TradFi markets."
Alex Ryvkin
Founder and CEO at Rho Labs
Investor perspective
"Market participants across the world widely use IRDs to efficiently hedge against or to capitalise on future rate changes. Given the apparent importance of rates to the global macro environment, we are very happy to support this project, which seeks to use technology to make rates markets more robust and secure. We are excited to see what blockchain’s role will be in the future of capital markets, and we continue supporting the projects developing this thesis."
Olga Shikhantsova
Partner, Speedinvest
Use of funds
- 01Continue product development
