Protego’s Series A round of $70 million attracted investment from a number of crypto investors, including Coinbase, FTX and Avalanche. The startup is currently in the process of putting together a Series A round, which would bring the startup’s value to close to $2Billion.
Protego Trust Bank is a chartered crypto bank that Brian Brooks advised. It raised $70million from a number of crypto heavyweights in 2017 and is currently in the early stages for a second round of funding. This would bring the company to nearly $2 billion.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the Series A fundraise raised $70 million and closed quietly in 2021. It included the investment arms from FTX, Coinbase and Algorand as well as Digital Currency Group and NYCA Partners.
Although the value of the Series A round remains unclear, sources close to The Block claim that Protego has launched a Series B round which is expected to bring the company to close to $2Billion. They also said that the process was only recently started and that there is no set timeline for closing the round.
Protego’s spokesperson declined to comment on The Block.
Chartering a Course
Greg Gilman founded Protego in 2017. He is currently its executive chairman. Science is also co-founded by Gilman, a startup incubator. Protego was in the news earlier this year, when it named Brian Brooks, a former US comptroller for the currency, to its board.
In January 2021, Brooks resigned from his regulatory position. Protego received a conditional Federal Charter one month later from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. This opened the door to the conversion of the charter originally granted by the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions.
Brooks, who was appointed CEO of Bitfury crypto miner in October 2013 after a brief spell at CEO of Binance.US stated in a statement he made when he joined Protego, that “the complexities, opportunities, and investments in digital assets” require that institutional investors have secure and compliant partners in order to gain access to the sector.
He said, “Protego Trust Bank’s staff is disciplined in balancing these requirements with a broad understanding how distributed ledger technology will transform the manner financial assets are issued and custodied. Traded and managed throughout their livescycle.”
While much is being said about institutional adoption of crypto, startups that aim to provide safe access to the sector continue receiving significant amounts from investors. Last week, Elwood Technologies, a crypto-focused trading and market access platform that Alan Howard owns, raised $70 Million in a Series B round led by Goldman Sachs.
